


Start Again

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Aftermath of, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Future Fic, M/M, Multi, Panic Attacks, Recreational Drug Use, and then eventually try to fix things together, and they try to fix things with, leading down a road towards addiction, the boys are very very broken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 06:49:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: "If Donald Trump wins again … I’m just gonna get really drunk, book myself on CNN and MSNBC, and just start doing this. I’m not doing the whole, like, ‘I’m gonna move out of America.’ No. I’m just gonna get hammered and go on cable." - Jon Favreau, February 2018





	1. Dan

“Good morning, Mr. Pfeiffer.”

Dan glances down at the clock on the pay-as-you-go flip-phone he’d bought his first morning in New Zealand. “More like afternoon, Frank.”

Franks laughs, pulling a rag out of his back pocket to clean off the bar in front of Dan’s normal spot. “That it is. The usual?”

Dan nods. “Thanks, and if you have today’s paper, I wouldn’t say no.”

“Picking fights with Mrs. Beacher again?” Frank chuckles.

“I save that for city council meetings,” Dan promises, “but I did write a little something.”

Frank hands over the paper and leans on his elbows so he can read upside down as Dan flips to the second page and runs his finger down to the editorial section.

_Queenstown Resident Calls for New Stoplight on Esplanade_

“Residents, plural,” Dan corrects as he reads. “They let editors run rampant at the Otaga.”

“I bet you could whip that editorial department into shape, Mr. Pfeiffer,” Frank suggests, turning to reach for a tumbler from the rack. 

Dan shivers, reflexively. “Find me a job that starts after noon, and I might be interested,” he quips. He pointedly does not mention his five am internal alarm clark, honed after so many decades rising with politics and the dawn, and another handful of years rising with the East Coast-based Twitter news cycle. At least now he reaches for his book at 5 am and not his phone. At least now he reads until his eyes close again, and then rolls over and sleeps until Frank opens the bar.

“Well,” Frank continues, sliding the glass in front of Dan, the yellows and reds of his Mai Thai mixing slowly. “At least you’re getting them to address real issues, even if it’s only as a concerned citizen. Do you know how many people are injured at that intersection every year?”

Dan tilts his head at his editorial as he picks up his drink. Polynesian symbols are melded into the glass and his thumb and middle finger slip comfortably into the ridges and angles. “Two too many.”

Frank nods. “Damn right.” He leans back against the counter, switching the channel to SKY Sports. “Did you watch the Sharks last night?”

“Of course I did,” Dan scoffs. “Injuries are killing them, sure, but that decision to play Jones at the end of the third?”

Frank nods. “They’ve gotta fire Flavell at the end of the season.”

“We can only hope,” Dan sighs. 

Dan skims the rest of the newspaper and is just picking up his next book - a thriller he’d bought for 25 cents at the library sale on a number of recommendations - when Frank flips the TV to One News Now. Dan groans, already feeling his hackles rise as the leader of the National Party swims into focus.

“Oh come on,” Dan frowns, motioning towards the TV and tipping his chair back so he can see better as he argues with it.

He’s halfway through a rant about multi-party politics and drug legislation when he’s interrupted by the shrill chime of his phone. He glances down, expecting it to be the newspaper with a number of complaints about his Op Ed, or maybe the radio station asking for an interview, except-

Dan stares at the 01 country code. There’s only one person in the US who has this number, and he has her number memorized.

Dan grabs his phone off the bar, leaving his drink and walking the five steps out the unenclosed walls towards the beach. “Pfeiffer here.”

“Dan,” Axe’s voice filters across nine-thousand miles and eight months. “You’re a hard man to reach.”

“By design,” Dan agrees, swearing silently as he tips off the path and into the sand. 

“How’s New Zealand treating you?”

Dan futzes with the nose of his sunglasses, squinting into the shadows of mountains and trees gleaming off the pristine turquoise water. In the distance, a paraglider takes off from Ben Lomond, cutting across the Bay. An hour ago, Queenstown had felt as remote as Dan could get. Now, Dan wishes he’d bought that property half the way up Cecil Peak, the one with well water and the ham radio and the extra hour drive up a dirt road to add to the miles between them. “Not a bad place to spend the apocalypse.”

Axe laughs but, when Dan filters it through his catalogue of Axe’s laughs, it doesn’t come out joyous or with good humor. “I don’t begrudge you your flight response-”

“As generous as that is of you,” Dan sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. He forgot the sunscreen, again, and his skin’s still peeling from the last time he forgot. He’ll have to run down to the corner store once he pries Axe off the phone. “I didn’t actually ask.”

“But,” Axe continues, like Dan hadn’t spoken, “now it’s time to stand and fight.”

“There are people fighting,” Dan sighs, again. “Younger people, smarter people. The party has moved on from you and me.”

“If you want to fade from politics, that’s fine, I won’t begrudge you your place in the history books.”

Dan can feel the familiar prickle down his spine, bright sparks of white heat that have nothing to do with the sun.

“But we have a chance to _do something_ now.”

“I had my chance to do something. Twice.” Dan argues. The tips of his fingers feel numb. “The country rejected it, twice.”

“Not the majority,” Axe says, dropping low and serious. This is the Axe Dan remembers from the earliest days of the Obama campaign: cynical to a fault, which only lent weight to his single-minded belief that Obama wasn’t only the best candidate, but also a candidate who could win. “POTUS and I are starting something new, a progressive Think Tank cum grassroots organizing effort. It’s a joint venture between the Obama Center and the IoP. We’re looking for someone to run it.”

Dan’s breath catches in his throat in short, choked bursts. “I can give you a few names.”

“I only need one.” Axe says, pointedly, and Dan can hear it in Axe’s exasperation before Axe says it. “You.”

The paraglider Dan had been watching lands in the sand, a few feet from him. The sun catches against the kite's bright primary colors and Dan has to hold his hand out against it to combat his lightheadedness. “How far down the list am I?” Dan asks, as he contemplates asking the young couple if he can borrow it. He figures it’d get him pretty far into the woods.

“You’re my second call,” Axe admits. “Jen politely declined. She thought you’d be better suited, and I have to agree.”

Dan clenches his fists, closing his eyes to ward off the nausea he knows is next. Dan remembers the shaking in his knees and the numb, distant feeling in his hands, the heavy weight of responsibility and hopelessness that manifested in a series of panic attacks following the 2020 election. A second Trump presidency, it turns out, wasn’t very good for his hypertension.

His new cocktail of triggers - a daily intake of Twitter with a side of yelling on CNN and the Pod followed by a whiskey nightcap - had become just as dangerous as eighty-hour work weeks at the President’s beck and call. Having the country on his shoulders, figuratively, was no better for his health than having it on his shoulders physically.

“Tell you what,” Axe cuts through his thoughts. “I’m forwarding a plane ticket. It takes off two weeks from today. I’ll have a car waiting at JFK and, if you don’t get in it, we’ll never talk about it again.”

The line goes dead before Dan has to fathom an answer.

He crouches in the edge of the surf, feeling the wet sand sink under his feet and the cool water caress his pressure points. When he thinks he can without being nauseous, he stands and, with his sandals in his hand, trudges back to Frank’s barefoot. Frank will have a fresh drink waiting for him.

***

Alyssa meets him at the train station in Kingston with a sign that reads “Pfeiffer” in her indecipherable scrawl and a mostly-full flask. “Thought you might need this after a night in the city.”

Dan takes it gratefully and pulls her into a hug, "I missed you," lifting her off her feet until she hits his shoulder in retaliation.

“You haven’t been gone that long.” She rolls her eyes and doesn’t offer to grab his bags. 

The bulk of his belongings - his grandmother’s good china and the framed photos Souza had given him when he retired from the White House - are in a storage unit north of San Francisco and he’d moved to New Zealand in the same two duffel bags and backpack he has with him now. They've gained heft while he was overseas, though, and he grunts as he lifts them into the trunk of her CR-V. “Your hospitality is heartwarming.”

“You deserted me for greener pastures, I don’t have a very warm heart.”

Dan tips the flask back and climbs into the front seat. “I texted you.”

Alyssa snorts as she throws the homemade sign into the back and starts the car. “Barely.”

Dan shrugs. His iPhone is somewhere at the bottom of one of those duffel bags, nine months out of date and out of power. His New Zealand phone was mainly reserved for daily weather and surf quality checks, dinner reservations, and Alyssa. “You’re the only person who had my number.”

“I feel special.”

“You should.” Dan’s on hour fifty-one of traveling and is too tired to field the heat she’s throwing at him. “You abused it.”

Alyssa frowns. “I only talked to you about politics once.”

Dan closes his eyes against the pine trees rushing by and rolls his head back against the headrest. “Axelrod.”

“Oh.” Dan’s known her long enough to hear the flinch in her voice. “Yeah, sorry about that. He made a compelling case.”

Dan snorts.

Alyssa sighs. “Wasn’t it time to come home anyway?”

Dan rolls his head towards her, blinking his eyes open. Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head, the strands of grey she’d told him she stopped dying reflecting in the window. She’s wearing round, red-rimmed glasses and a _Women’s Time to Choose is Now_ sweatshirt, rolled to her elbows. His chest twists with how much he’s missed her and how much of her life he’s missed. “The grey looks good. It makes you look distinguished.”

Alyssa reaches over to punch his thigh. “Was that a crack about my height?” She flattens her fingers, leaving her hand on his knee.

“No,” Dan laughs, spreading his hand over hers. “It was all true.”

She shakes her head, but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

***

“It’s not much,” Alyssa warns. She has his backpack swung over her shoulders - a concession, he figures, for her airport dismissal - as she turns the knob to the guest house. “Especially not after a night at the Ritz Carlton.”

Dan rolls his eyes. Axe had been good to his word. There’d been a Lincoln Town Car waiting for him when he'd landed in JFK. Or, rather, he'd been met by a driver with a captain’s hat under one arm and an expensive metal sign in the other, with a gruff Queen’s accent and a smile that said ‘I’m being paid to be nice to you.’ He’d then driven Dan into the city in silence and deposited him at the fucking Ritz on Central Park. “Axe never does anything quietly.”

Alyssa steps into the cottage, her back rippling with laughter. “The Ritz _is_ quiet for Axe.”

Dan drops his bags in the doorway and looks around him. It's small, but warm, and Alyssa’s placed a fresh vase of sunflowers on the small breakfast table next to two bottles of red.

“There’s more where that comes from,” Alyssa promises, dropping his backpack and putting her hands on her hips as she glances around. She hasn’t been this nervous around him since she yelled at him in their first meeting in Manchester, NH three lifetimes ago. She’d been so young then, with fire in her eyes and an edge in her voice that made him stand up and listen. She’d yelled for at least ten minutes, before Dey had whispered _that’s Dan Pfeiffer _in her ear. She hadn’t apologized. Dan had known, right then and there, with his toes and his fingers freezing off in a New Hampshire January, that she’d be a pivotal player in the rest of his life story.

Dan nods, smiling, trying to put her at ease when nothing about the rolling in his stomach makes ease possible.

“And I got your favorite whiskey, it’s in the cupboard.” Alyssa crosses to the kitchen, opening and closing the cabinets. “There’s some basics in here, but you can come to the house whenever you want. DK and I always make enough to feed an army.”

Dan raises an eyebrow.

“Or we order pizza,” she relents as she pads past the half-wall towards the bed. “I made it up with linen, but, if it’s too warm or too cold, just- get, you.” She swipes at the small orange cat curled on Dan’s pillow. “This is Bob. He’s a pest who keeps finding his way into the guesthouse.”

“Where you feed and water him?” Dan asks, not bothering to keep his amusement out of his voice as Bob uncurls just long enough to take a swipe at Alyssa, then curl the other way around his tail. 

Alyssa sighs. “He was so skinny when he first started coming around. Midge,” she swallows around Midge’s name, “used to watch him from the window. I couldn’t let him starve.”

“Of course not,” Dan agrees. 

He hasn’t moved from the doorway. He’s afraid that if he moves, he might start crying. His fingers have been tingling since he passed under the Welcome to the United States of America sign at JFK. But, this is Alyssa. He can see her everywhere, in the sunflowers on the table and the knotted rug under his feet and the patchwork quilt on the bed that was clearly made by her unskilled and shaky hands. He can see _her_, brushing a strand of grey hair behind her ear, avoiding his eyes. 

He tries to catch hers gaze, anyway. “This is so much better than the Ritz.”

“Really?” She shrugs, taking a step away from the bed. “Well, I’ll leave you to get settled in. Sleep as long as you want in the morning, I have a radio show at 6:30, but then I’m free all day. They’ll be coffee and-”

Dan catches her wrist. “Have a glass of wine with me?”

She takes a deep breath and looks up at him. Stress leaks out of her shoulders and she smiles - really smiles, the smile that shows all her teeth and has charmed the Queen and the Pope and Kanye West - at him. “I’d like that.”

***

“Dan?”

Dan swears as the jar slips out of his tongs and into the scalding water, splashing the soft web of skin between his thumb and his index finger. Bob meows, stretching his back and brushing across Dan’s ankles.

“You in here?” Alyssa pokes her head around the door of the outside shed she’s turned into a canning studio. “Still haven’t gotten the hang of that, huh?”

“I was doing just fine before you distracted me,” Dan grumbles. He rights the jar gingerly, then steps back. There’s a small medical kit under the stove, for exactly these occasions and Dan’s lost count of the number of times he’s had to use it over the past two months.

Bob meows again and climbs into Dan’s lap when he settles on the stool with a tube of Neosporin.

Alyssa rolls her eyes. “If you answered the first five times I called, I wouldn’t have to be so shrill.”

“Your word, not mine,” Dan reminds her. “You called five times?”

“At least.” Alyssa holds up the canvas bags in her hands. “I was going to walk into town for the farmer’s market. You wanna come?”

Dan nods, scratching behind Bob’s ears before pushing him off his knees. He leaves the Neosporin and the bandaids on the small table. “I need more currants.”

Alyssa laughs, hooking her elbow with his as they step onto the dirt path that leads through the woods and into the center of town. She’s wearing Birkenstocks and a jumpsuit that has to be too hot for the humidity that still clings to the Hudson Valley in mid-September. Dan’s still cycling through the Hawaiian shirts and Tommy Bahama linen shorts that had constituted his New Zealand wardrobe, but he’s regretting the socks he’d put on in deference to the canning process and Bob’s claws.

“You know,” Alyssa grins, her cheeks flushed with the early morning air, “I could make a fortune in exchange for a _Where Is He Now_ profile.”

Dan raises an eyebrow. “No one would believe you.”

“Oh,” Alyssa hops over a tree root, “but I have pictorial evidence.”

“Doctored,” Dan scoffs. “A little photoshop and you’ve pasted my face over any other middle-aged man living out his midlife existential crisis in upstate New York.”

Alyssa snorts. “Like I don’t have other things to do than doctor photos of you.”

“Do you?” Dan raises an eyebrow, even though it’s not quite a fair question. Unlike him, Alyssa is busy. She splits her time doing radio and TV hits, talking out against the second term Trump policies Dan still hasn’t brought himself to look at yet, and raising money for all the organizations that are still doing what Dan assumes is good work. Organizations like Time’s Up and NARAL who didn’t throw in the towel on November 3rd, 2020. Organizations that were, it turned out, so much stronger than Dan himself was.

“I do,” Alyssa says, her voice dropping a little, probably reading his mind, like she always can.

“I know,” Dan promises as the path dumps them into the right corner of the market, directly next to his favorite cheese tent.

“Alyssa,” Bart greets them, “Dan, I’ve got a new blue this morning, freshly cured. A taste?”

Dan nods, reaching to take the two huge chunks. “Fuck, the is delicious. Someday you’ll have to show me how you make these.”

Bart winks at him. “Anytime you’ve got a few months on your hands, I’d take you on.”

Dan laughs, “time is all I’ve got,” but next to him, Alyssa straightens. 

She pulls her fingers from Dan’s elbow, waving a thank you to Bart as she sidesteps them both. Dan frowns and follows her. He knows better than to push, so he just holds open the bag for her to fill with zucchini and melon and the currants he needs for more jam. When she says, absently, “we should really think about apple picking soon,” he nods, "anytime." When she snaps her fingers, he hands over the cash he keeps in his pockets, separate from the wallet he still hasn’t pulled from his duffel bag after two months.

He waits her out, until, on the way home, she finally sighs. “You know you can stay here as long as you want.”

Dan nods. He's been expecting this. Honestly, he's impressed she's made it this long. “But?”

“But I wasn’t actually coming out to get you for the market this morning.” She smiles ruefully. “Although that was a nice side effect.”

Dan swallows and waits her out. The bag of vegetables feels heavier on his shoulder than it did three feet ago.

Alyssa sighs. “Axe called this morning.”

_Fuck_. “Oh.”

“He’s called every morning this week.” Alyssa reaches out for his wrist, her fingers light on his pressure point, half for comfort and half, he knows, to monitor his panic attacks. “I’ll hold him off for as long as you need me too, but one of these days he’s going to show up at the front door and then there’s only going to be so much I can do, you know?”

Dan nods. Her thumb moves rhythmically over his wrist and he can feel the beating of his heart under her skin. “Yeah.”

“Anyway.” She forces a smile, stepping back onto the path and pulling him along with her. “My White Widow plant has started budding. How about we get spectacularly high and forget about everything for a little while?”

Dan laughs. “I’m in.”

That evening, though, when the sun has set and his high has settled into a low thrum of calm, Dan pulls his larger duffel bag out of the closet. It’s still mostly full and Bob stretches around Dan's ankles, his back stiff as he sniffs it curiously. “Gross, isn’t it?” Dan asks, scratching Bob’s neck absently as he digs to the very bottom.

It’s still there, cold and heavy in his palm as he pulls it out. He sighs, reaching in for the charging cable and then twisting to find an outlet. He leans against the wall, his legs spread in front of him as Bob stretches his entire body in the crook of Dan’s thighs.

“Here goes nothing,” Dan mutters as he presses the power button and the Apple logo swims into view.

***

“Hey.” Alyssa looks up from her book to smile at him. There’s a joint hanging from her fingers and she holds it out.

“Thanks.” Dan takes it, sucking in a long puff as he places a bottle of wine between them. “Want a glass?”

Alyssa grins, placing her book aside. “Always.”

“Perfect.” Dan hands her a glass before settling in next to her on the floral outdoor couch. 

The garden is big all around them, vines growing past their elbows and tomato and pepper plants at their feet. Dan loves cities. He never quite has settled into the quiet familiarity of small town life, preferring the comfort of isolation in DC and San Francisco. Sometimes, he thinks he’s spent his life searching for the warmth and noise and history of the great foreign cities he grew up in. He never would have guessed that he’d find it, here, in the muggy weight of upstate New York, of all places.

It’s been a month, though, since he booted up his phone and, by proxy, the emotional toil he’s had locked away at the bottom of his bag since last November. His slow ease back into daily political media consumption hasn’t so much been a leisurely walk in the park as it has been a cliff dive. Close his eyes, hold his breath, hope the fall doesn’t break his neck.

Now that he’s taken the leap though, he’s starting to feel the itch in his bones. The need to move again. The need to be somewhere big and loud and colorful, where he can talk to more than his tomatoes and Bob every day. The need to find his community, to bring people together to do something, because, even after everything, he still knows that’s the only way the country will survive this.

He’s been avoiding this conversation for weeks. He’s almost googled their names a hundred times, but fear and the memory of their expressions the last time he saw them keeping him from the last hurtle. 

So he grasps his wine glass between his fingers, crosses his legs so that his knee brushes Alyssa’s, and asks, “how are they?”

Alyssa freezes, her shoulder tight against his, the joint halfway to her lips. “Are you sure you want to know?”

Dan takes a deep breath, “no,” and reaches for the joint. He takes a puff. “But I need to hear it.”

She nods, pulls her ankles under her and stretches for her phone. “Jon first?”

Dan wishes he could ask why. He wishes he could ask if they’re starting at the bottom or the top. Instead, he just nods and accepts the phone when she pulls up YouTube and hands it over. The video’s labeled ‘CNN Commentator Jon Favreau Loses it Over Healthcare.’ It has two and half million views.

“He’s made quite a name for himself,” Alyssa chuckles a little darkly. “Always knew he had it in him, one way or the other.”

Dan laughs, despite himself. He presses play, and stops laughing.

The clip is three minutes and thirty-seven seconds of Jon screaming. His hair is the longest Dan’s ever seen it and there are strands in both the front and back escaping the carefully gelled look CNN’s make-up staff has attempted. His eyes are dark and wide, his pupils a little wild. Dan knows healthcare in and out, but he has a hard time following Jon’s ramblings and non-sequiturs. There’s a part, two minutes in, where he doesn’t finish five sentences in a row.

“Fuck,” Dan swallows.

Alyssa leans over to click the next one. “There are more.”

“More?” Dan’s eyes widen. “This isn’t the worst one?”

Alyssa shakes her head. “Not by a long shot.”

On the small screen, Jon’s tie is askew and he’s hitting the desk in front of him to, Dan can only assume because he can’t tell from Jon’s words alone, emphasize his points. “At least he’s not camera shy anymore?” He offers.

“The alcohol helps with that,” Alyssa sighs.

“Doesn’t it always?” Dan asks, clicking forward to the next one. “Have you talked to him?”

Alyssa shakes her head. “A little, in the beginning, but- Last time I heard, he wasn’t even taking Tommy’s calls.”

“Fuck.” Dan looks down at Alyssa’s phone and plays the next video, and the next. Alyssa squeezes his arm, not even flinching when Jon spends a good ninety seconds yelling about the intricate details of a single statute of one immigration bill even Dan had forgotten about. 

Even through the horrified knot in his chest, Dan aches with missing him.

The video ends and, before it can slide into the next one, Dan pauses it. He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes to clear them for a moment, before opening them again. “Lovett?”

Alyssa takes her phone back, her fingers moving quickly across the keyboard. "Have you ever heard of Twitch?"

Dan frowns. There's something deep in his memory, connected to Bill Simmons and Amazon and- "video games?"

"Yeah." Alyssa nods. "Recorded video games. The site has 30 million daily active users."

Dan whistles. "Maybe we should have run the 2020 debates on there."

"Yeah," Alyssa's mouth twitches, "maybe we should have."

Dan stares down that mental path for a moment, the winding dirt road overgrown with thorns and poisoned berries and dark hand-like branches, and ducks his head. "And Lovett, he's ... on Twitch? Doing- what?"

"Playing video games," Alyssa shrugs. There's a line across her forehead that wasn't there a year ago, and her eyes are rimmed with deep circles that darken the shade of her eyes. "Making a lot of money, presumably."

"Is he on right now?" Dan asks. He's not even sure that's how Twitch works, but- fuck, he feels as old as Alyssa looks.

Alyssa looks down as she pulls up the app. "Probably. He doesn't do much else these days. Yep." She hands it over. "Make sure you read the comments."

Dan frowns down at the screen. "The comments?"

Alyssa points to the side of the screen, "they're the most revealing part."

Dan's eyes flick between the stream and the sidebar. It's overwhelming, trying to catch the comments that fly by next to a half-screen CGI ogre that seems intent on killing Lovett's elf, when all he wants to look at is the tiny picture-in-picture of Lovett's face, his eyes screwed up in concentration and a microphone covering the most expressive part of him.

Lovett's talking into that mic, his voice rising and falling with the ogre's moves. He's rambling, getting two paragraphs in before jumping to the next topic. Dan struggles to keep up, until Alyssa hooks her chin over his shoulder and starts reading off the comments to him.

"Why is he giving these assholes the time of day?" Dan asks, as Lovett slides from a rant about - Dan assumes, video game and not actual - weaponry into a desperately-edged, more than vaguely inappropriate, rejoinder about how he’s been keeping up his wrist dexterity.

In the comments, BaxterSux69 makes a lewd comment about amateurism that Dan would prefer never again to hear from Alyssa’s mouth. Alyssa sighs when she’s done reading. “Better them than someone else.”

Dan doesn’t have to ask who someone else is. Every time Lovett spits at BaxterSux69, he’s not yelling at Twitter trolls or the millions of Democratic activists so disillusioned by the primary process that they stayed at home on Election Day. Every time he responds to Fellatio666, he’s not putting his bitter energy into Dan and Jon and Tommy and all the others who left him standing alone with the Crooked Media torch all those months ago. Every time he tells off Chr0nicallyHard12, he’s spent another five minutes not turning all that recrimination inwards.

Dan flinches. “How long has this been going on?”

“A few months.” Alyssa takes her phone back so she can mute it. “It started as a hobby, while he was still doing the Pod, then he started splitting his time. Then he put Lovett or Leave It on hold and Twitch expanded to, well, this.”

Dan shivers. “This?”

Alyssa lets out a frustrated breath. “He won’t even take my calls anymore. He only talks to us through that damn chat, and I can’t get any of the fucking lingo right. It’s worse than a foreign language. Remember when I tried to learn a line for the Polish Prime Minister?”

“And complimented his duck feet?” Dan allows himself a chuckle at the memory.

Alyssa snorts. “I still blame it on our ambassador. She said my accent was fine.”

“She was lying.”

“No shit.” Alyssa fiddles with her phone and pulls up an Urban Dictionary link. “If you don’t want the chat to turn on you, I suggest you study this. I’ll send you the link.”

Dan’s phone bings. He bookmarks the link for later. “Why do they care?”

Alyssa snorts, “the question of the century. Why do Twitter trolls troll?”

Dan sighs. “Some of those comments were worse than Twitter trolls.”

“I know,” Alyssa sighs deeply, her chest moving against his side. “He doesn’t block any of them either.”

Dan specifically does not say _he wants them_ and instead says, “I hesitate to even ask, but, Tommy?”

“Tommy’s killing it, actually.” Alyssa closes out of Twitch and pulls up Facebook. “Unless you were asking about his soul and not this perfect specimen that’s taken over his body.”

Dan snorts as he accepts Alyssa’s phone and zooms in. The first photo is of Tommy, lounging in an infinity pool thirty stories above Tokyo or Hong Kong or Shanghai. He’s shirtless, leaning back against the edge of the pool so that Dan can count the new muscles in his shoulders and arms.

“I warned you,” Alyssa looks over his shoulder with a whistle. “Perfect specimen.”

Dan’s chest clenches as he scrolls to the next photo. It’s a group shot, with Tommy in the middle of four young, perfectly-coiffed women. They’re all holding Baccarat champagne flutes carelessly in their hands. Dan can only tell it’s a different hotel by the red towels instead of tan.

“This isn’t Tommy,” Dan frowns.

Alyssa’s breath is warm in his ear as she catches it. “Maybe it is, now. He seems happy, at least?”

Dan scrolls to a third photo. It’s seven of, according to the caption, Tommy’s colleagues, all dressed only in open suit jackets, colorful bow ties, and matching khaki shorts. Tommy’s wearing a light foam green that does nothing for his highlighted hair or his long, oddly tanned legs.

Dan locks her phone and lets it fall into his lap as he drops his head back against the wicker couch. Alyssa settles next to him, dropping her head to his shoulder, and Dan leans into her. 

“What happened to us?” he whispers.

Her voice is low and steady. “We weren’t prepared to lose.”

Dan swallows. “I thought we were.”

“I know.” 

Bob mewls and jumps into Dan’s lap, curling onto his thighs. Alyssa reaches out to touch him and Dan twists his fingers with hers in Bob’s fur. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it through this.”

Alyssa pulls back, just enough to look at him clearly. Her eyes are round behind her glasses, shining with as much warmth as recrimination. “We have to. What other choice do we have?”

Dan takes a deep breath. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Alyssa settles back into his side, reaching for the forgotten joint and lighting it up. “Fuck.”


	2. Tommy

“Honey, I’m home,” Tommy calls as swipes his phone to open their front door. Lucca barks from deep in the apartment and skitters across the floor, her nails clicking against the hardwood. Tommy grimaces as he drops his briefcase and falls to one knee to greet her. “Hey baby, you’re due for the groomers, huh?”

Lucca rises onto her hind legs so she can lick his face, her body wiggling between his knees. She’s looking shaggy, too, and Tommy makes a mental note to make her an appointment.

“I’ve missed you too,” Tommy laughs, scratching behind her ears as he pushes her down and calls, “Mandy?”

“Tom? Is that you?” Her voice filters from down the hallway.

Tommy chuckles. “Better hope it is,” he calls, reaching for the mail on the counter and sorting through it. There are five more RSVPs - one from Ben, two from his mother’s friends, and another two from Mandy’s publicist’s college roommates - but none of the ones he’s waiting for.

“There’s a bottle of wine on the counter. Bring it with you?”

Tommy drops the mail with a sigh and and reaches for the bottle and the glass she’s left out for him. It’s a 2014 Calera Pinot, from the case they’d shipped back from their trip to Sonoma last month for a steal at $90 a bottle. He grabs a treat for Lucca, too, and leads the way down the hallway.

Lucca races ahead of him, jumping onto the bed and making a mess of the neat piles of clothes Mandy’s stacked in Tommy’s suitcase. Tommy snorts and pushes her off before Mandy comes out of their closet, her hands full of sweaters and button downs. She’s dressed in her workout gear and her hair’s in a loose, messy bun, but she smells like cucumber and lime as she rises onto her toes to greet him with a kiss around her armful. “You’re home late.”

“Long day, and I still have more to do,” Tommy sighs, raising an eyebrow at the sweaters. “It’s October.”

“Late October,” she corrects. “In Chicago. They don’t call it the Windy City for nothing.”

“Did you know that nickname doesn’t come from the weather?” Tommy asks, before he can stop himself. “It was named for all the blustering and corruption in Chicago politics.”

It’s the kind of fact Lovett would have bitten into, held tightly between his teeth and run with, and for a moment that can’t be long enough to count but feels like 11 months, Tommy waits for him to jump in. But Mandy just smiles, loose and easy, as she drops two sweaters into the suitcase. “Maybe, but Mary's cousin lives in Evanston and she says she starts wearing puffy coats in late September.”

Mary - Mandy’s publicist - has a hypochondriac streak a mile wide, but Tommy laughs and lets her pack the sweaters. He reaches for her empty glass, filling it as he muses, “I did have a truly awful winter there in 2006.”

Mandy hums, the way she always does when Tommy brings up the early years of the Obama campaign. It’s a reminder of the years between them, and Tommy generally tries to steer away from reminiscing about them. Tommy generally tries to steer away from reminiscing about politics at all. There isn’t must to reminisce about, these days.

Tommy sighs, reaching out to grab her wrist, pulling her into his lap. She squeaks, kicking her legs and holding her glass out so it doesn’t spill across both their chests.

“_Tom_. This top is expensive.”

“You got if for free from a sponsor,” Tommy smiles, pushing everything away but the feel of her smile against his mouth. “Hi.”

She arches her back, letting him trail his hands along her bare midriff with a happy sound, before pulling back and settling more carefully across his thighs. “I wish you didn’t have to go away again.”

Tommy sighs, resting his forehead on her temple. “I wish you could come with me.”

She spreads her hand on his chest. Her fingernails are painted a bright, vibrant orange to match the neon green shorts riding up her thighs. She sighs, not bothering to make it sound less exasperated than it is. “I have a shoot, you know that.”

Tommy does, but, “couldn’t you reschedule?” He asks, for the third time since he’d planned this trip.

Mandy frowns. “The sponsor’s been planning this for months. We have the location, the extras, the director-”

“You’re the principal,” Tommy interrupts. “I’ll take a photo of you in Grant Park wearing the shoes and you can post that.”

Mandy sighs, sliding off his thighs and setting her glass on the bedside table. “This is my career, Tom.”

Tommy downs the rest of his glass and fills it again. “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that this is going to be really hard for me, and I’d really like the support.”

“I know.” She sighs, leaning down to press a chaste kiss to his mouth. “But this is something you have to do on your own. I packed your green tie, but you probably need two.”

Tommy feels bereft at her loss and wants to reach out for her again, but stops himself. She’s right. This is his past, a past she has never been a part of, and he can’t blame her for not understanding the full breadth and depth of it when he’s gone to such lengths to keep her from it. He takes a long sip of his wine. “The lobster one. Chris said the head of the Chicago office has a thing for lobsters.”

Mandy nods, stepping past him and disappearing into the closet. “What’s he doing in Chicago then?”

“Good question,” Tommy snorts. He leverages himself up with a groan. “I’ve still gotta finish up my presentation for tomorrow. I’ll be in my office.”

“Okay,” she calls, her voice muffled. “Try not to work too late.”

“I won’t,” Tommy promises, not at all sure that he’ll be able to keep it.

Lucca hops off the bed and follows him down the hallway. On one side, the floor-to-ceilings windows look out over the city of Boston below. The other side is lined with framed photos, a couple of Tommy and his family, a few of Mandy and her three sisters, but mostly a series taken from their engagement shoot a few weeks ago. They’re all perfectly framed and shot, with the ocean in the background and the artificial breeze from a wind machine ruffling their hair. Mandy looks at home, happy and carefree with her arms locked around his neck and a possessive hand on his chest. He looks out of his league. 

Tommy shakes his head, counting his blessings as he slides into the large leather chair behind his desk. Lucca woofs and jumps into his lap, curling with her head next to his laptop. Tommy scratches behind her ears, his eyes flicking to the one picture of Crooked he has hanging, lost in the shadows between two bookshelves. It was taken just a few weeks after they incorporated, the four of them dressed in their finest next to POTUS on his last day in office. They all look so hopeful and so scared. Tommy wonders what might have happened, if they’d stayed that scared and less complacent.

His laptop pings and Tommy shakes his head. He scoots his chair closer to his desk and gets to work.

***

“Hey, Vietor, nice job today.” Chris holds up his hand for a high-five. “They ate the shit out of your presentation.”

Tommy snorts and holds his hand up, not even wincing as his palm stings. “Thanks for the quarterbacking, man.”

Chris nods emphatically, “just doing my job, V-man.” 

Chris is younger than Tommy, but has over a decade’s experience in consulting. He had been more than happy to take Tommy under his wing when Tommy joined the firm almost a year ago and has never complained that it’s Tommy’s name at the top of the ticket in most of their joint presentations. He has an easy, uncomplicated smile and Tommy owes him, for the work but even more so for setting him up with Mandy not a week after meeting him.

Chris smiles, now, toothy and wide, and pats his wallet in his back pocket. “We’ve got an entire evening and no limit on the corporate card. What do you say we start at Morton’s and see where the night takes us?”

“As appealing as that sounds,” Tommy says, and it does sound appealing, way more appealing than what he’s about to wade into, “I have plans tonight."

Chris puts a hand over his heart. “Trading me in for a younger man already? What are we going to tell the kids?”

Tommy snorts and shoves Chris’ shoulder. “Tear the town down for me, man, okay?”

“Oh, you know it.” Chris winks. “I’ll send pictures.”

Tommy shakes his head, walking backwards towards the curb as he pulls up Uber. “Please don’t.”

“No guarantees,” Chris calls.

Tommy raises his middle finger.

***

The Uber drops him on 53rd street, halfway between a church and a Boston Market. The sun is just starting to set and Tommy pulls his scarf tighter around his neck, glad that Mandy had made him pack it, after all, as he walks the rest of the block to Giordano’s.

“Good evening, sir. How many?”

Tommy glances around the small, unassuming restaurant. He hasn’t been here since he was twenty-six years old, just a few months into his tenure at the senate office. POTUS had sat across from him, then, his tie undone and his sleeves rolled up and his mind racing with ideas after a guest lecture at the University of Chicago law school. Tommy had called him Barack, then. 

“Two.” Tommy pulls his hands out of the pockets of his Armani suit pants to hold up two fingers. “Reservation should be under Pfeiffer.”

The waitress smiles at him and ushers him to follow her. “We don’t take reservations, but, you’re in luck, we do still have a free table. It’s in the back and it might be a little noisy, hope that’s okay?”

Tommy shrugs, “sure,” and follows her. “My friend should be here soon, if you could send him back? And we’ll start with a bottle of your best Cab.”

Her hand pauses for a moment, then she shakes herself and drops the menu in front of him. “Of course,” she nods, tacking on “sir” with a twist of her mouth.

Tommy sighs, pulling his phone out of his pocket. Two selfies from Chris, his neck already ringed with a leis, and a picture of Lucca from Mandy, but nothing from Dan. He sends back _no pain, no gain_ and _I love you both_ respectively, then flips open the menu.

He’s reading over the salad menu for a fifth time, wondering idly if he can hold the bacon and the dressing, when a shadow falls over the table.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dan says in a rush as he pulls out the chair with his ankle and falls into it. His hair’s sticking to his sweaty forehead and his henley is rolled to his elbows. “I had a student in my office and I lost track of time.”

“No problem.” Tommy smirks over his menu. “It’ll only cost you about $15 a minute.”

Dan slides his backpack to his feet and reaches for his water glass. “Discount for an old friend?”

Tommy’s chest aches. “I can wave it, just this once.”

“Magnanimous.” Dan folds his menu sideways and leans his elbows against it. “It takes about forty-five minutes to cook, so, we should put our order in soon. I usually get sausage and onions, but-”

Tommy starts interrupting, “I was just going to get a salad,” but stops at Dan’s withering glare. “Sausage and onions is fine.”

Dan smiles and waves for their waitress, kissing her cheek as she gets close. “Hey Aja, we’ll get the usual, but make it a large? And throw in a Caesar salad, too.”

She grins and jots down a few notes. “Coming right up, Dan.”

“You’re the best,” Dan tells her with a grin, holding his menu out before turning back to Tommy and reaching for his glass of wine. “This looks expensive.”

“Only the best for old friends,” Tommy promises as he holds out his glass. “Cheers.”

Dan nods, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, “cheers.” He makes a surprised sound at his first sip. “Better be careful with that, or you’re going to be rolling me home.”

Tommy laughs. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Dan laughs with him - remembering, Tommy hopes, the first time they were in Iowa, when too many pitchers of Miller Light and a raucous game of darts had done them in - and takes another sip. “My constitution’s not what it was in Iowa.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Tommy raises his glass again.

“Although I did develop something of an iron stomach in New Zealand.” Dan’s eyes light up with a fire Tommy hasn’t seen since, well, since they were canvassing in Orange County almost exactly a year ago, when the inevitable had still felt like a river they had a dam for. “Although, admittedly, that might have had less to do with the local whiskey and more to do with my medically mandated rest and relaxation.”

Dan chuckles, like it’s not a big deal. Like the sight of him - struggling for breath, his chest heaving as his skin tinged blue on that damn Burrow couch Lovett had never shut up about - doesn’t still haunt Tommy’s nightmares.

Tommy downs his wine and reaches for the bottle to cover how hard his hands are shaking. “Yeah.”

Dan takes a careful sip of his wine and holds out his glass for Tommy to refill. “You should have come by the office. Axe would have loved to see you, and a few students might have even recognized you. You’re a bit of a celebrity around here.”

“Next time,” Tommy promises, with no intention of keeping it. If Tommy ever deserved that kind of celebrity, he definitely doesn’t now. “I can deliver a lecture on stock prices and divestitures that’ll blow their socks off.”

Dan doesn’t laugh.

Tommy tightens his fingers on his wine glass, biting himself back from everything he wants to say. Tommy wants to say _you left first_. He wants to run through the litany of texts, tweets, and fucking snail mail he sent for months with no response. He wants to accuse Dan of giving up on them, because if anyone knew how to save them, it was Dan, and he fucking _left_.

But, Dan is sitting in front of him, looking fifteen years and not a day older than he had first walking into the Iowa field office. He’s wearing the same sweaty, exasperated, tense look he had worn then, all coiled energy and unrelenting belief. No amount of greying hair or wrinkled temples could change that.

So, Tommy takes a deep breath and says, instead, “Mandy’s sad she couldn’t be here. She wanted to meet you.”

Dan takes a slow sip of wine and raises Tommy’s lie with a lie of his own. “You look happy. With her.”

“That’s mostly the air brushing,” Tommy laughs, catching the lie and twisting it into a joke which, if he’s honest, has never been his strong suit. He flips his phone over, pulling up her Instagram feed and handing it over. “They can do magic, now.”

Dan laughs, taking his phone and flipping through it slowly. It’s mostly a thread of Mandy, dressed in the latest sneakers and sunglasses and carrying brightly-colored handbags. Tommy’s sprinkled throughout, though - Mandy’s sponsors had approved of him from the get go, he ‘fit her image,’ or so his contracts say when he’s included - and Dan pauses on a picture they’d taken in Ibiza. Mandy’s wearing a bright red gown with a slit that cut all the way up her hip, her hair falling around both of them where she’s hooked her chin over his shoulder. They’re forty feet above the city, hanging on a crane with the sea glittering below them and a five-star meal in front of them. 

“This looks terrifying,” Dan says, zooming in to look closer at the picture.

“Fear heightens your taste buds,” Tommy shrugs, “supposedly.”

“And did it?”

“I don’t really know,” Tommy says, although what he means is, _I don’t really remember_. He remembers that trip in flashes of sun and city lights, the red of Mandy’s dress and the press of her body against his, the heavy pulse of the disco and the white powder that had him flying for five days straight.

Dan nods and locks Tommy’s phone, handing it back without scrolling through any more. “Does she always get a million likes?”

Tommy shrugs. “Usually.”

“Influencers.” Dan shakes his head. “How would she feel about helping us out in the midterms?”

Tommy shuffles, taking his phone back and fiddling with the lock so he doesn’t have to look at Dan. Chris has sent him another three photos, each with a new, brightly colored drink in his hand. “She isn’t a Democrat.”

Dan puts his wine down. “Tommy.”

Tommy sighs. “She doesn’t vote. It’s a sponsorship thing.”

Aja interrupts them with the pizza. “Here you go, gentleman. Anything else you need?”

Tommy reaches for the bottle of wine and shakes it. “We’re going to need a couple more of these.”

***

“Sorry, I’ve just got to-” Dan squats down next to his backpack so he can dig through it, searching for his keys with fumbling fingers.

Tommy groans, leaning his head back against the brick of Dan’s townhouse. “I shouldn’t have eaten that second slice,” he sighs, resting a hand on his stomach and wondering if he could get away with undoing the top button on his suit pants. They fit him perfectly, made to the measurements Mandy had sent last month to his tailor, updated after he’d upped his workout to six times a week in preparation for the wedding.

“We shouldn’t have drank that third bottle,” Dan corrects. He holds up his keys triumphantly. “Found them.”

He stands, putting the key in the lock and opening the door slowly, foot-first. 

“Sorry,” Dan apologizes, for the sixth time since they’d opened the last bottle. Tommy’s been keeping count. This time, it’s for the small orange cat trying to scramble across his foot. “Bob still thinks we’re living in the country and tries to escape at every opportunity.”

Dan grabs the cat, swinging him up and into his arms. Tommy raises an eyebrow and reaches out, gingerly, to pet between the cat’s ears. “Ahh, Bob?”

Dan nods, letting Bob crawl onto his shoulder. “He was Alyssa’s but he, ahh, adopted me. Crawled into my suitcase when I was packing and I couldn’t very well leave him after that.”

Bob mewls, his tail brushing against Dan’s neck, his eyes bright and slitted as he looks at Tommy. Tommy pulls his hand back. He’s never been much of a cat person.

“Do you need anything?” Dan asks, heading into the kitchen and flicking the light on. It’s a small space and it clearly came furnished. Tommy has to squint to see touches of Dan in the thriller on the coffee table and the Obama Library mug in the sink. 

“A nightcap?” Tommy offers.

Dan snorts, already reaching for a stack of mail and shuffling through it. “I do have to work in the morning. Ahh, here it is.”

Tommy accepts the RSVP Dan hands him and pushes, “just one more,” because he still hasn’t gotten what he came for and if Dan doesn’t need the push, Tommy does.

Dan chuckles and walks over the liquor cabinet, “just one,” and grabs the gin. “Sorry I hadn’t sent that yet. I couldn’t decide between the fish and the steak.”

Tommy pulls the card out of the envelope. Dan’s made a small ‘x’ next to the steak. There’s no ‘x’ over the plus one box Tommy had left open for him and Tommy feels a rush of warmth that he pushes away, buries deep into the same mental nooks and crannies where he hides all his thoughts of Dan. He’s getting _married. _Mandy’s been there for him, in his darkest moments she offered a flashlight and a rope, built a new life for him that’s easy and uncomplicated. Nothing lies the way of Dan’s icy intensity but a step backwards into the same spiral down, down into the sink hole that landed them both here in the first place.

“I’ll put you down for both,” Tommy promises, sliding the card back into the envelope and accepting the drink - light on the tonic, heavy on the gin - Dan hands him. “I have some sway with the caterers.”

“I bet,” Dan snorts.

“So,” Tommy says, slowly, grateful for the gin and the smooth path it traces down his throat and into his shaking fingers, “I have a favor to ask you.”

Dan pauses. His drink sits, untouched, on the counter and Bob is still curled around his neck, blinking at Tommy accusingly. “I figured.”

Tommy catches the accusation and buries it deep, deep, deep. “My bachelor party’s in Bali next month. I’d really like Jon and Lovett there.”

Dan shakes his head, reaching for his drink. “They’re not talking to me, either.”

“Maybe,” Tommy shrugs, flipping the accusation back on him, “but they would, if you tried.”

“Tommy-”

“They’re important to me,” Tommy speaks over him feeling the truth of his own words like a sucker punch. “I need them to be there.”

Dan sighs. “I can try.”

“That’s all I’m asking for.”

“Okay,” Dan says, picking up his drink and moving it into the living room. “The couch pulls out, if you wanna stay?”

Tommy shakes his head and downs his drink. It's tempting, it's _so _tempting, but Tommy's never trusted himself with Dan when he's wine-drunk and loose. He fumbles with his phone as he pulls up Uber. “I’ve got an early flight in the morning.”

Dan nods to himself. “Well, thank you for the pizza and the wine.”

“Thank my company,” Tommy shrugs. He takes a step towards the door. “It really was great to see you.”

Dan nods, rubbing at his elbows through his henley. His chest is folded inwards on itself and that damn cat has jumped off his shoulder to twist around his ankles. He looks, suddenly, almost as bad as the last time Tommy had seen him, so Tommy does what he’d wanted to do then and steps forward, pulling Dan into a tight hug.

Dan loosens, his hand flattening on Tommy’s back and his breath warm in Tommy’s ear. “I’m glad you came."

Tommy’s phone rings. 

He steps back, waving it. “Don’t be a stranger this time.”

Dan nods and Tommy watches him for as long as he can before he has to turn and jog down the steps towards his waiting car.

***

“How was your dinner?” Mandy asks when she answers the phone on his third try. 

“Ahh,” Tommy pauses. “Hi babe. It was good.”

“Ah huh,” Mandy says, her voice muffled as she holds the phone to her chest and barks an order. “Sorry, we’re still- No, that does not go there! Stage left.”

Tommy slides off his hotel bed and reaches into the minibar for a handful of tiny bottles. He wishes he had something stronger, but Chris is still out and Tommy doesn’t know enough people in Chicago anymore. “How’s the shoot?”

Mandy sighs. “Long, exhausting. These interns act like they’ve never been around a camera before.”

Tommy checks his watch. It’s almost midnight in Boston. “Did you get someone to feed and walk Lucca?”

“No, Tommy, I let the damn dog starve.”

“Sorry.” Tommy opens the mini rum bottle and twists the top between his fingers. “I worry about her when I’m not there.”

Mandy’s sighs deepens. “I’m not completely incompetent.”

“I know that.”

“Then stop treating me that way.” Mandy muffles the phone again and Tommy takes the opportunity to tip the bottle back. “Sorry, Tommy, the director’s about to walk out and we still have three shots to get. I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow?”

Tommy nods. “Yeah, okay.”

“I love you.”

Tommy nods, but she hangs up before he gets halfway through “me too.”

Tommy sighs, gathering the rest of the bottles and dropping them onto the mattress in front of him. He turns on the TV, getting halfway through a late night episode of _How I Met Your Mother _before he gets bored and starts flipping through the channels in search of basketball highlights. 

He almost surfs past CNN, except he’d recognize Jon, even _this _Jon, even while surfing channels, even when he's a few mini bottles away from passing out. This Jon, with his hair unkempt, the back sticking up where he’s let it go too long for his nervous habit of rubbing his neck. This Jon, with eyes that are deep and muddy and always feel like they’re judging Tommy, even through the camera lens and the miles between them. This Jon, who _gained _passion rather than losing it, who’s idea of giving up was to try and berate the country to his will.

It’s more than Tommy’s done. 

Tommy threw in the towel the morning Dan boarded a plane for New Zealand. The better part of valor, his dad always taught him, was to know when you were beat, and Tommy had known.

Tommy had given the prime years of his young adulthood working for this country and then the prime years of his adulthood trying to convince the country to work with him. It’s his right, he figures, to spend his forties on himself.

On the screen, Jon hits his fist against his desk, sending his water glass precariously close to the edge.

Tommy reaches for the mini Jack Daniels.


	3. Jon

Amy sighs as she reaches for Jon’s chin. “Stop moving or I’m going to give you a mustache.”

“Now that’s an idea,” Jon shrugs, taking a sip of his vodka soda around Amy’s hand. “I’ve always wondered what I’d look like with a handlebar.”

Amy raises an eyebrow as she knocks his cup away and slides in front of him, forcing his knees open so she can step closer. Her fingers tighten on his chin as she forces his head up. 

Jon blinks into the blinding fluorescent lights. He used to hate this part of his rare appearances on the Sunday shows and those few times he went on the Late Show. He, and Lovett and Tommy and- 

Jon reaches under Amy’s arm for his cup.

“Nah uh,” she shakes her head. “At least let me finish.”

Jon taps his fingers against his cup, his knee bouncing as he lets the lights dance across his eyes, leaving splotches of black and yellow dots at the edges of his vision. Jon chases after them because, if he tilts his head into Amy’s hand, he can hear the flash of Lovett’s laugh in the black dots and, if he squints just right, he can see the crinkles of Dan’s eyes in the yellowed shadows. If he blinks fast enough, he can catch glimpses of Tommy’s back, the long expanses of pale skin broken only by patches of freckles. But Jon doesn’t need the lights to imagine that. Jon doesn’t need to imagine that at all.

Jon’s starting to regret that last vodka cranberry he’d had at lunch.

Jon’s starting to regret stopping at that last vodka cranberry.

“There.” Amy smirks, stepping back. “Not my best work, but, what do you think?”

Jon raises his cup at the same time as he looks past Amy’s shoulder and into the mirror. Amy’s painted a wobbly handlebar mustache between his nose and his upper lip. He snorts, blowing bubbles of vodka and soda into his nostrils. “I look distinguished.”

“You look like Inspector Gadget," a voice says, a familiar, impossible voice.

Jon looks up at the lights, like, maybe, they’re manifesting in more than just the shape of Dan’s eyes. Because- yep, Dan’s still there, his image reflected back at Jon through the mirror, full-bodied. He’s wearing well-fitted jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, buttoned low on his collarbone and perfectly matched to the glacier blue of his eyes.

Jon feels like he’s sitting atop a glacier, his thighs pinching closed as his fingertips slip and slide against the summit. “I was going for more of a Tom Selleck vibe.”

Dan shoves his hands into his front pockets and shrugs. “Will you settle for John Waters?”

Amy grins, pointing her eyeliner at Dan. “That’s exactly who I was going for.”

“Then you succeeded.” Dan pulls one hand out of his pockets and steps forward. “I’m Dan Pfeiffer. I used to work with Jon.”

_Work with_. Jon flinches.

“I know who you are,” Amy giggles, stepping forward to shake his hand. “Welcome to CNN, Mr. Pfeiffer.”

“Dan, please.” Dan smiles, that same disarming smile that’s knocked Jon off his feet for as long as Jon’s known him.

Jon lifts his cup, taking a long sip. When he drops it again, the mustache is broken in two places, smudges across his upper lip. Jon can relate. He feels smudged, like the outline of himself has been broken and blurred, stretched so far that even Jon, himself, can’t recognize it. 

Jon takes another sip as he offers, “Dan lives in New Zealand. He’s come a long way.” _If he’s come at all and this isn’t a very cruel figment of my very active imagination_.

“Chicago, now.” Dan shrugs. “Axe called me back a few months ago.”

“Oh.”

Dan tries to catch his eyes in the mirror, but Jon dodges him. He sighs, pushing his hands back into his pockets. “I tried to call you, but you're a hard man to reach.”

Jon shrugs, “I’ve been here,” and it comes out more like an accusation than he meant it to.

“Every night,” Amy adds, gently, stepping back in between Jon’s knees as the lights flash the pre-show warning. “That’s the five minute call, let me get this off you.”

Jon nods, lifting his chin and his cup. She doesn’t push the plastic rim away, this time.

Dan leans against the doorjamb, crossing his arms across his chest. The Hawaiian shirt pulls at his biceps, riding up, the way they would if Jon had ever let himself imagine Dan like this. “What’s on the docket tonight?”

Jon glances at the call sheet, taped to the mirror by Amy’s elbow. “Tariffs. Apparently.”

“I’m sure you have a lot to say about that,” Dan shrugs, his shoulders curling wide and inwards. “If you wanna go over your talking points-”

“I’m good.” Jon slides out of his chair, pushing Amy away while there’s still a faint smudge of mustache on his upper lip. Amy opens her mouth to argue, but Jon shakes his head, reaching past her for his suit jacket. He shrugs it on, over his wrinkled dress shirt and the Celtics basketball shorts he’s been wearing since Saturday.

“Okay,” Dan says, slowly. He doesn’t move away as Jon closes the distance between them and Jon doesn’t stop until there are only inches between them.

He can feel the heat radiating off Dan in waves.

He can smell the faint aroma of Dan’s floral cologne.

He can see a series of small cat hairs dotting his shirt.

Jon frowns. “You have a cat?”

Dan laughs. “Hard to believe, but, yeah. His name’s Bob.”

Jon nods. That is beyond even his wildest imagination’s reach. He repeats, “Bob,” slowly.

“Yeah.” Dan runs a hand through his hair. It’s entirely grey, now. “So, I’m going to stick around for the show. I’d like to take you to dinner, afterwards, if you’d let me?”

Jon swallows. “Warwick is open late.”

Dan nods. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay,” Jon swallows. He can hear CNN’s top-of-the-hour jingle filter down the hallway. Jon nods again. “Okay.”

Dan smiles.

Jon’s heart thumps, widely, and, with a last downing sip of his vodka, Jon sucks in his stomach and slides past him.

He has a show to do.

***

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t boot in my car. Uber doesn’t pay us back for cleaning supplies.”

“Or the time it takes it to clean it,” Jon nods. “You work for a misogynist asshole who doesn’t give a shit about his workers, you know that?”

“I’m paying my way through medical school.” She catches his eyes in the rearview mirror. “You have a choice of apps, what’s your excuse?”

Jon regrets his five-day stubble and bloodshot eyes. “I forgot the name of the other one.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Lyft?”

Jon motions at himself. “I’m a little drunk.”

“No shit.” She snorts. “I wasn’t kidding about the no throw-up thing. I’ll make you clean it up if you do, you can give me a one star review for all I care.”

“I won’t.” Jon turns his head to watch Sunset whip past them. “I’m pretty used to this.”

“I don’t know if that’s supposed to make me feel better,” she shrugs, “but it does.”

“Glad I could be of service.” Jon shakes his head as she switches into the right lane and flicks her blinker on. “Could you take the second turn?”

“The app tells me to turn here.”

“I know.” Jon swallows. “The other way adds a couple minutes. I’ll tip you, promise.”

“Nothing about your whole thing,” she takes a hand off the steering wheel to make a circling motion, “has led me to trust you.”

She skips the first turn though.

Jon lets out a sigh of relief and rests his aching forehead on the window. He doesn’t think he could stand to drive by Lovett’s house - with the familiar Jeep that sits untouched most days and the light in the living room that Jon almost never sees go dark - while Dan’s voice is still echoing around his mind.

_Tommy’s getting married._

_Tommy’s getting married and he wants us to be there._

Dan, who looked good, with his rolled sleeves and the deep, healthy tan of someone who’s spent his days outdoors and not ten minutes every-other-week in a tanning bed. Dan, who showed him pictures of Bob and Alyssa and POTUS and spoke gently enough to not make it feel like a recrimination. Dan, who had a reason to leave, whose doctor had given him an actual life or death ultimatum. Unlike Jon, who watched himself slip further and further apart without raising a finger to save himself. Unlike Jon who, it turns out, had been living on borrowed time for fucking years.

“We’re here.” His driver says, her lip twisting in a way that tells him it isn’t her first attempt to rouse him.

“Yeah.” Jon pulls his phone out of his pocket. There’s a notification from Dan, but he pushes it away to open the Uber app. He gives her a $15 tip before he’s even outta the car. “I hope you have a nice evening.”

“It’s past midnight.”

“Right.” Jon steps out and pauses. “Good luck in med school.”

She laughs, surprised. “Thanks. Drink some water, okay?”

Jon nods and closes the door behind him, standing still for a moment to steady himself. Leo barks and he sighs, taking a shaky step forward as he pats his pockets, grateful to find his keys still where - he thought although, if he’s honest with himself, he couldn’t be sure - he’d left them.

He gets the door open and slides to one wobbly knee to fend of Leo’s wiggling body and aggressive tongue. “Yeah, buddy,” Jon says, giving into gravity and sitting, his back against the door, as Leo clambers over his thighs. “I missed you too.”

His phone bings again in his pocket and, this time, Jon opens Dan’s messages.

A flight to Bali and a flight back to LA. Three days. If Tommy’s ready to move on from the flashes of memory that haunt Jon’s every waking moment, than the least Jon can do is give him that.

Jon scratches between Leo’s ears. “What do you say to a few days at Uncle Andy’s?”

Leo licks his wrist.

***

“Jon Favreau.” Jon repeats, for the third time. He has to lean against the check-in counter heavily, the extra handful of Valium he’d taken to get through the international flight mixing with the handle of vodka he’d drunk in first class, his knuckles white against the wood. “I’m with the Vietor party.”

“Sorry, sir.” The harried concierge types quickly. “Can you spell that for us?”

“F-A-V-”

“You must be Favs.” A large hand clasps Jon’s shoulder and he has to close his eyes to keep his balance. “Pfeiffer said you’d be arriving soon. Chris Crowley, I work with Tommy. He’s told me a lot about you.”

Tommy’s name slides down his spine, leaving sweat and electricity sparking unpleasantly in its wake. “Really?” Jon asks, before he can stop himself. He can barely even think Tommy’s name without a tsunami of thoughts - the freckled curve of Tommy’s calf, the curl of his toes in Jon’s sheets, the pull of his biceps against his t-shirt - overtaking him, and Tommy’s been _talking about him_.

“All the time.” Chris grins. “Hey, Sarah, this one’s with us. He’s one of Vietor’s oldest friends.”

_Oldest_ crashes against Jon’s skull. Like Jon’s five-day old bread, out on the counter too long and just this side of crusty. Like Jon’s a family heirloom, pulled out and admired on special occasions but locked away for safe keeping on the every day.

“So do you think you could help him out? For me.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. Yes, I see you now.” The concierge - Sarah, apparently - reaches for a bag under the counter and hands it to Jon. It’s an Armani leather weekender with Jon’s initials embroidered on the front. “Welcome to Sunset Resorts. I’ll get you settled right away.”

Chris drops a leis over Jon’s head and shoves an orange and purple drink into his hand. “We’ve got a head start, so, drink up.”

Jon laughs a little, “I don’t know about that,” but does take a sip. It’s fruity and strong and it lingers on his tongue and coats the insides of his brain. It's perfect. “But, I’ll pretend if it’ll keep these coming.”

Chris laughs, squeezing his fingers tighter around Jon’s shoulder. “I knew I’d like you, Favreau.”

“Whatever Tommy said about me,” Jon twists his mouth around a grimace until it comes out an approximation of the confident smile he used to wear every day, “it’s all lies.”

Chris’s grin widens. “I hope not all of it.”

Sarah laughs along with the game and hands Jon his key card. “You’re on the fourteenth floor. I’m sure your friend can show you the way.”

Chris tightens his fingers on Jon’s shoulder and pulls him away from the steadying support of the check-in counter. “I will, after a little detour to the pool.”

“I’m not wearing a swimsuit,” Jon protests. 

His toes trip on the edge of the rug, and Chris catches him without missing a step. He eyes Jon from head to toe, taking in red sores on his chin from where he’d shaved for the first time in weeks before getting on the plane, the thickness around his hips and settling into his thighs, the paleness of his skin. Chris takes all that in and shrugs. “You can wear your underwear. They’re not sticklers for rules around here.”

Jon opens his mouth to protest, then pauses.

Chris’ breath smells like mangos and vodka and cinnamon. He’s shorter than Jon, but he sucks in air like he belongs in every room he walks into, just because he’s there. He smiles like he means it, as if, for this specific moment in time, Jon is the most important person in the world.

Jon can see why Tommy likes him. Jon can see why Chris is the everyday china while Jon sits in the cupboard, chipped and nostalgic.

Jon lets his protests die in his throat and nods.

“Good man.” Chris grins, pulling Jon with him, down an ornate hallway lined with gold light fixtures and Buddha figurines and out into the mid-afternoon sun.

The pool’s three times the size of Jon’s house in LA. The water stretches in all directions for as far as he can see, before sinking below the horizon, falling into the beach in the distance. There are deck chairs spread haphazardly, interspersed with young Indonesian women wearing bathing suits and traditional headdresses, carrying trays of drinks and cigarettes and massage oil.

“Quite something, isn’t it?” Chris asks, his sunglasses slid halfway down his nose as he follows Jon’s gaze to a young bartender who’s bent over, arguing with a guest who-

Fuck.

“Come on.” Chris’ fingers tighten on Jon’s elbow. “If we’re quick we can order a couple more drinks before she leaves.”

Jon nods, dumbly, not able to take his eyes away from Lovett as he waves his hands at the bartender. His knees are spread, his calves pale under his over-large rainbow swim trunks. He’s the only man Jon can see who’s wearing a t-shirt, stretched taut and worn across his chest. His phone is dangling between his fingers and he’s wearing aviators that cover half his face. He looks up as they get closer, the wrinkles in his forehead smoothing out, “oh good, Chris, can you tell this woman that I’m fine? I have half a drink left and I don’t need a massage.”

Chris laughs, stepping next to him and taking the drink from Lovett’s hand and handing it to the woman. “This one’s half melted. He’ll have another, and if you could bring us two tequila sunsets? Doubles please.”

Lovett sighs, “I’m fine, really, all I need is-” and stops as he follows Chris’ waving hand to Jon. He swallows and draws his knees together and towards his chest. “Jon.”

Jon has spent months with nothing more than Lovett’s voice filtering through his computer speakers over anthropomorphized ogres and zombies and, for a particularly memorable week, a scantily clad elf with long, pointed ears and dark curls pulled into a man-bun. Jon had jerked off to the sound of Lovett’s voice coming from that elf for days which, Jon thinks wildly, he hadn’t considered being embarrassed by until right now.

But now Lovett’s staring at him, his curls long and framing his face the way they were the last time he’d locked himself in his house to pursue an impossible dream, but otherwise the same Lovett he was a year ago. 

The same judging eyes Lovett had when Jon had closed the door to their office at Crooked - the office that had held four, and then three, and soon to be one - and explained, in what Jon had thought was a clear and coherent narrative but he can see now was neither of those things, that he just _couldn’t do it anymore_. The same unhappy twist to Lovett’s mouth, the sneer he uses to shield himself from the disappointment his unyielding optimism inevitably brings down around his ears, the one he’d worn when he’d responded with a shrug and a dismissive _good luck at CNN_. The same tightness in his shoulders, like he’s holding himself together with a shoelace and a stick of gum and the sheer force of his will, like he’d never meant Jon to hear the _I always knew it was too good to last_ he’d whispered when Jon’s hand was already on the door knob.

Jon swallows. “Hey Lovett. How was your flight?”

Lovett shrugs. His phone pings and his eyes dart towards it. “Fine. Long.”

“Yeah.” Jon drops his duffel and his new Armani weekender so he can rub the back of his neck. “Took a few extra pills to get through it.”

Lovett looks up, his fingers poised over his screen and his sunglasses sliding down his nose. His eyes are swampy, wet and unreadable for one of the rare times Jon can remember. “Sure you should be drinking that?”

Jon turns his head to see the waitress, back with a full tray and a brighter smile at the $100 tip in Chris’ fingers. “Thanks,” Jon mumbles, taking the glass she hands him. He holds it up. “When in Bali.”

Lovett mirrors him, muttering, “when in Bali, right,” but he puts it down without taking a sip.

Jon finishes his in two goes.

Chris whoops, “the party has arrived,” and clasps Jon’s shoulder. “Strip, the pool is calling.”

Jon drops his empty glass next to Lovett’s and his clothes in an unkempt pile under Lovett’s chair. He’s wearing an old pair of Tommy John briefs, the band stretched beyond recognition across his middle, but he doesn’t have time to regret his choice of traveling clothes as Chris leads him across the deck to the edge of the pool.

He can feel Lovett’s eyes on him, tracking his body under those stupidly large, protective aviators, as Jon sits on the edge of the pool to dangle his legs into the warm water.

“Hey, you made it.”

Tommy’s voice jolts through him and Jon jerks up, almost slipping off the side of the pool as he turns his head, unerringly, like there’s a tracker between Jon’s heart and Tommy’s smile that may go dormant but will never stop broadcasting. 

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Tommy laughs, wading through the shallows water to get to him. “Sorry about the long flight, I know you hate those.”

Jon swallows, “it was fine. I’m here.” His throat feels thick and sticky.

Tommy’s smile softens, “yeah, you are,” and for one impossible moment, Jon thinks Tommy’s remembering the same things he is.

Tommy spreading Jon’s knees, his hands wide and reverent on the pale skin of Jon’s thighs. Tommy’s voice, thick with whiskey and choked with promise, chuckling around _I always knew you’d be gorgeous like this_ as if it was the last secret he had left to give. Tommy’s back arching under Jon’s nails, bowing and pushing closer, like he was making up for a dozen missed years and preparing for a dozen more.

But then Tommy screams as he’s pulled under the water, twisting and laughing as he comes up spluttering, his thinning hair plastered to his forehead. “You ruined my drink, asshole,” he crows, pushing the other man under and holding him there for longer than strictly necessary.

Jon’s eyes fizzle over the scene once, twice, a third time as his mind scrambles to settle on _this _Tommy. This Tommy, who comes after fifteen years of Tommys who Jon has known as intimately as he knows himself. Fifteen years of Tommys who have grown and learned and adapted _to Jon_, _with_ Jon, as an integral part of Jon’s identity ever since he started forming real, lasting memories. Fifteen years of living their lives, side by side, back to back, mentally and physically, and now this Tommy is standing in front of him, a stranger.

Tommy grins, splashing water in Jon’s direction. “Come on, Jon. I wanna introduce you to everyone.”

Jon takes a deep breath. He guesses he’d better get to know this Tommy, too.

“Coming,” he calls, and slides into the water.

***

“I could sleep for three days,” Jon groans, falling onto Chris’ bed, face-first. He regrets the decision immediately, as his body bounces and the thousand-dollar steak dinner and multiple bottles of champagne float into his chest. “Fuck.”

“None of that.” Chris tosses a garter belt onto the bed. It lands on his neck, the sequins scratching against his skin. “We’re taking Tommy skinny dipping.”

Jon groans. His eyes feel thick and muddy. “We can do that _after _we nap.”

Chris shakes his head. “I don’t trust you, man. We’ll never get you out of that bed. Come on,” he taps Jon’s ankle. “Let’s go.”

Jon sighs, rolling onto his back. He rests his head on his hand, trying to open up space to digest. “How are you so energetic all the time?”

Chris snorts and strikes a pose, one hand on the curve of his waist and the other raised high in the air. “My natural charisma.”

Jon throws his arm over his eyes. “Just a catnap.”

The bed dips as Chris kneels next to him. “Do you really wanna know how I do it?”

Jon lowers his arm, blinking up at Chris. Chris’ mouth is twisted, serious and thoughtful for the first time in the forty-eight hours Jon has known him. Chris is the brightest person Jon has met in months, energy oozing out of his pores and dripping onto everyone he passes. Jon can barely get out of bed most days, and then only to crawl into the minibar in his CNN dressing room, so- “Yeah,” he swallows, “I really would.”

Chris nods, sliding off the bed and motioning for Jon to follow him.

Chris’ bathroom is a mess. There are little bottles of shampoo and conditioner strewn across the counter and blue globs of toothpaste in the sink. His dopp kit is open, his razor and a few pill bottles spilling out of it where it’s pushed to the side to make room for-

Jon freezes in the doorway.

Chris glances at him, then back to the three neat lines of white powder. “You don’t have to, but, you asked how I keep up my energy? This is how.”

Jon swallows.

“This is your first time?”

Jon shakes his head. “A few times, in college.” 

Chris grins. “You remember the rush then?”

Jon remembers. He remembers the way his mind burst into life, bright gold sparks of electricity creating pathways between ideas and thoughts that are normally dormant. He remembers how easy everything had felt, any lingering worries or anxieties floating away until he was the loudest, most confidant, most charismatic person in whatever room he was in. He remembers the sizzling along his entire body, from the tips of his ears to the ends of his toes and, on a few memorable occasions, the way his skin had warmed to a woman’s touch and the blissful lack of self-awareness as he reached peaks of pleasure untouched since.

“Thought so.” Chris smirks and offers Jon a rolled up hundred dollar bill. “Your choice.”

Jon thinks about the way Tommy lights up with laughter, his face smoothing and losing ten years, every time Chris cracks a joke, and reaches for the bill. His fingers shake. “There are three lines.”

“Yeah,” Chris laughs, craning his neck around Jon. “The other’s for- There he is.”

“Hey.” Tommy leans in the doorway. He’s wearing his swim trunks and his dress shirt from dinner, perfectly tailored around his hips and unbuttoned down his chest. “You started the party without me.”

Chris shrugs. “Snoozers are losers.”

Tommy laughs and reaches for the bill. He leans over the counter, his hand cupped over his nose. His back pulls under his white shirt and Jon's eyes trace the constellation of freckles he knows runs across Tommy's ribs.

“Fuck.” Tommy straightens, rubbing at his nostril as he hands it to Jon. “Hurry, I hear the party’s starting without us.

Their fingers brush as Jon takes it.

***

The water is cool and smooth on Jon’s skin, like he’s swimming in a sea of aloe with a bad sunburn. It flows between the webs of his fingers and settles next to his big toe, making his skin goosebump and tingle. He slides onto his back, tipping his head under and kicking his feet slowly to keep himself floating. Overhead, the stars are sparkling, ten of them, a hundred of them, a thousand of them.

“Watch out below,” Tommy calls, as he takes a running leap and springs off the diving board.

Jon turns his head fast enough to see Tommy fly through the night sky, a long, unending flash of pale skin broken only by a small patch of dirty curls between his thighs, before he cannonballs next to Jon.

The waves swallow Jon whole and he laughs, sinking to the bottom before pushing off, speeding through the water and dolphin-ing out of it.

“A seven for the jump,” Chris calls, from his place on the lower diving board. “A three for whatever it was Favs just did.”

“Hey.” Jon frowns. “Biased judging.”

Chris shrugs. “Prove me wrong.”

Jon sighs, swimming over to the edge of the pool and pulling himself out of the water. He can feel each droplet of water slide down his body, down the mat of chest hair and across the curve of his stomach, bouncing between his bare thighs and falling to the pool deck with splats that sound loud to his ears.

The warm air hits his skin, sizzling and cooling him quickly. Jon shivers, from the air and from the eyes he feels on him. Lovett’s, all dark and judgmental heat, from where he’s curled in the same damn lounge chair he’s been in for the past two days, swathed in sweatpants and a mismatched striped shirt that rides high on his neck. Dan’s, all icy cool calculation, like he’s recording all of this, turning it over in that steel trap of his mind, moments away from the inevitable unflattering conclusions about Jon’s psyche that Jon is already much too aware of.

“Let’s see you beat a seven, Favreau,” Chris calls, cupping his hands around his mouth to create an airhorn.

Lovett jumps in his chair, his phone clattering to the deck with an unhealthy crack. “Fuck.”

“You wanna be next, Lovett?” Chris asks, sliding his knee away from his chest and spreading his legs. His dick is nestled between his thighs and the blue diving board. Jon doesn’t miss the way Lovett averts his eyes, quickly.

“I’m okay,” he mutters.

“Oh, come on,” Chris calls, “don’t be a party pooper.”

Jon takes the last few steps towards the diving board. The rungs feel cold and harsh against the bottoms of his feet and he’s relieved when he climbs out on top and can look down at Lovett and Dan and even Tommy, his blond head bobbing nine feet below him. He feels good up here, like he’s retaken the reigns of his life that he let drop all those months ago in Lovett’s office. 

“This is a party for him,” Jon shrugs. “He’d rather watch, wouldn’t you Lovett?”

Lovett flinches, burying the movement and the hurt that flashes across his face as he ducks to pick up his phone.

“Well,” Chris laughs, “that’s okay, then. You gonna jump or you gonna talk, Favs?”

Jon grins, “I’m gonna jump,” and takes a running start, springing off the diving board and flying through the air.

He laughs on the way down, pulling his knees into his chest and then releasing them too early, hitting the water, hard, on his back. The water splashes halfway up the deck, soaking Dan and Lovett and earning a cheer from the rest of the crowd.

“Ten out of ten,” Tommy crows.

“Twelve maybe,” Chris adds.

Jon grins, floating on his back, feeling pain like distant pinpricks up his spine. He belongs here, under the stars - tens, hundreds, thousands of them - with the laughter of Tommy’s friends in his ears.

***

There’s a voice, hissing, low and unfriendly, sliding through the water and up his spine and settling in the spot where, fuck, his back feels raw and sore and-

“Jon?”

It’s Dan’s voice. Dan’s squatting by the side of the pool, the thousand-word thriller he’s been dragging around all weekend squeezed under his arm and a frown Jon recognizes dragging his mouth down.

“Jon?” Dan calls again, and Jon wonders how many times it’s been. Twice? A handful? A dozen or more? “Jon, it’s late and you hit your back pretty hard earlier.”

“I’m fine,” Jon mumbles into the stars. He wants to stay here forever, looking at the stars, counting the drops of water against his skin, listening to the gentle sounds of lapping against the stairs in the shallow end.

“You’re not,” Dan says, its sharp edges scratching up Jon’s chest like needles.

Jon lets himself sink an inch further into the water, because he knows that. He knows he’s not fine. But if he gets up he’s going to have to confront the bruise on his back and the note of fear in Dan’s voice and the memories of Tommy’s body that keep blurring with the Tommy who’s tossing Chris into the deep end.

Jon doesn’t know how he still has the energy.

Maybe he did another line.

Maybe he did another line and didn’t invite Jon.

“Jon?” Dan asks and, this time, his voice sounds soft and soothing against Jon’s heated skin.

Jon sits up, letting his legs fall under the water. His body feels heavy as he turns towards Dan.

"That's good," Dan beckons him over, "the ladder's over here."

Jon doesn't know how long he was floating, but his thighs and arms are screaming loud enough to drown out his back as he grabs the edge of the ladder and hoists himself up. The air is blindingly cold against his heated skin and his body is heavy, pulling him down, down, down-

"Woah," Dan reaches out, grabbing his elbow and fighting gravity until he wins. 

If Dan were a superhero, he’d be gravity man. Jon chuckles, looking up to find Lovett, to see if he’s sharing in the joke. Is a joke even a joke if Lovett isn’t laughing too? Jon’s never known the answer to that one.

He can’t see Lovett though, only the long expanse of Dan’s chest. “Thanks,” Jon murmurs, still laughing quietly, as Dan wraps him in an oversized towel that scratches and pulls, incongruous with the memories Jon has of it, huge and soft and cushioned, from just a few hours ago.

"Of course." Dan rubs Jon's arms, letting circulation and friction bring blood rushing back into Jon’s limbs. "We should get you showered and hydrated and vertical."

"You're not leaving us so early?" Tommy calls, crossing his arms against the deck and lifting himself a little out of the water.

Tommy’s voice sounds loud, a drumbeat of impossibility against Jon's ears. Tommy’s fingers are tapping a rhythm against the deck, familiar but just out of reach, hanging at the edge of Jon’s conscious thoughts with every other memory Tommy’s fingers elicit. Tommy’s skin looks almost translucent against the white hot stars, as ghostly and fleeting as Tommy, himself, has proven to be.

"Come on, Jon," Tommy pushes. "We're just getting warmed up. Check Chris' pockets."

Dan scowls, following Tommy's gaze to the discarded jeans next to Lovett's chair. Lovett, himself, is still sitting there, still watching, still boring disappointed holes in Jon's back. He doesn’t move as he swings his gaze. “We're going to bed, Tommy. Thank you for your _hospitality_."

Tommy spreads an arm to encompass the pool, the ocean, the girls and the drugs and his own body. "What more could you ask for?"

“This?” Lovett scoffs. “You can afford this on a day’s salary. This isn’t hospitality. This is showing the fuck off.”

Tommy shifts, his shoulders curling outwards against the night sky as he scowls. "Oh, that's right, I forgot. I have to get on my knees, crawl through an ocean of fire, flagellate myself to be worthy of the great Jon Lovett."

Tommy spreads his fingers flat, leveraging himself out of the pool. He's graceful and lithe, water sliding off him in waves. Jon has to look away before he’s burned, but he watches Tommy’s body shiver through Lovett as Lovett watches, for a long, measurable moment, before he finally swallows and looks away.

"I thought so. You’re not interested in anything more than collecting scars.“ Tommy reaches for a towel, running it over his body jerkily. "You know why you keep such impossibly high standards?"

Jon can see Lovett’s jaw twitch and clench.

"So that no one will ever try to meet them," Tommy shakes his head. He swings the towel up and around his shoulders and leaves it hanging ineffectively. "So that you can bitch and moan and blame every other person in your life for your unhappiness rather than the one person you should."

Lovett turns his head, his eyes shining and dark as the ocean in the distance. "Fuck you, Tommy."

"No thank you."

Lovett makes a noise, low in his throat, and slides to his feet. "You know what's wrong with _you_, Tommy?"

Jon's ears are pounding, his teeth are pounding, his knees are pounding to the rapid, thump-thump-thump of his pulse.

"Lovett," Dan whispers.

Lovett crosses his arms across his chest and frowns at Dan. "_I_ didn't start this."

"No," Dan agrees. His fingers are still warm and steadying on Jon's wrist. "But you can end it. He's so fucked up right now, it’s not worth it.”

"Whatever." Tommy makes a _go ahead_ motion. "I can take it. Give me your best shot.”

Lovett’s never been able to walk away when Tommy’s pushing his buttons. 

Lovett lifts his chin defiantly. "You've been running from yourself for so long you wouldn't recognize him if he fucked you in the ass."

Tommy snorts, shaking his head. “Dear diary.” He catches Jon's eyes with a sneer. "Can you believe him?"

Jon can feel the drugs sliding out of his veins, leaving whispers in their wake, begging for more, begging for less, begging for the whole world to fucking stop turning for just a few minutes. "Yeah," Jon hears himself say, distantly. "I can."

"You fucking too?" Tommy rolls his eyes. “Come on, Jon, you get it. You were with me on election night. You-"

For one, unbearable heartbeat, Jon's absolutely certain that Tommy's gonna finish with _you were in my bed_.

But Tommy just shakes his head. "You saw how fucking meaningless it all was and you threw in the towel, just like I did."

Jon shakes his head. "I didn't. I don't."

Tommy snorts. "Don't tell me you go on CNN to _convince voters_ with your incoherent ramblings."

Jon flinches, away from the drugs, away from Dan's fingers, away from the look Tommy's giving him, like he understands him, like this terrible, ugly part of him is as laid bare to Tommy as the rest of him is. 

Jon takes a step back. “And what about you? You work for the people you've spent a life railing against because you, what?, _like it_? You're marrying a fucking model who is younger than you were when _Instagram was created_ because you’re living life to the fullest? What do you tell yourself, Tommy?”

Tommy's pupils are so wide and bloodshot that Jon can barely make out a rim of blue as Tommy catches his gaze. “I tell myself,” he says slowly, “that I needed a reason for living, and throwing myself on the fire in the name of the fucking Democratic Party wasn’t fucking doing it anymore.”

“I wasn’t living for the fucking Party.” Jon swallows, feeling his heart tumble over and over, choking off his throat as he pushes forward, towards the thing Tommy already knows, Jon’s almost sure that Tommy already knows, Tommy _should _know. “_You _were my reason for living.”

Lovett flinches, hard enough for Jon to catch out of the corner of his eye, and pulls out of Dan’s grasp, stepping around him, away from Dan, away from this version of Tommy that it turns out Jon does recognize he just doesn’t like, away from Jon, who can’t say a fucking thing right.

Jon can’t watch him leave.

Jon can’t say anything to correct all the assumptions he’s going to make.

The last vestiges of Jon’s life are falling around his shoulders and he can’t do a single fucking thing to stop it.

Tommy spreads his hands and doesn’t watch Lovett leave, either. "I'm happy. I'm sorry that I wanted to share that with you and I’m sorry that you can’t be happy for me.”

Then Tommy turns on his heel, walking in the opposite direction, into the dark of the pool, towards the diving board, towards Chris and the new life he has to offer.

Dan wraps an arm around Jon's shoulders. "You're shaking, Jon. Come on, let's get you into a hot shower."

Jon nods. He doesn't have the energy to resist anymore.

***

Bali’s airport is loud and crowded mid-day on a Friday. It grates on the frayed edges of Jon’s control, until his mind is as raw and sore as the rest of him is. He’s sunburned from head to toe, irritated by the waist of his sweatpants and the cuff of his shirt and any small wrinkle of fabric that deigns to touch his skin. 

Jon sighs, reaching over to pull out the extravagantly expensive bottle of aloe he’d bought at the airport gift shop, but stopping as his back flares to life. He’d woken up that morning with a raging headache and a bruise, already purpling and yellowing around a black center, stretching across his hips and halfway up his spine. He’d woken up with memories of Dan’s hands on his body, pushing him into the shower and getting him between his sheets, floating in his consciousness, but no actual Dan in sight, no note, no phone messages.

Jon forces himself through the pain, stretching into it as he grabs the aloe and his bottle of Valium.

He shakes the bottle into his palm, not bothering to count the little pile of pills before he tips them back.

He closes his eyes, leaning back against the chair that’s too small for his body, and listens for his flight to be called as he waits for the pills to ease the pain in his back and the pain in his heart.


	4. Lovett

Lovett's parking spot still has a plaque with his name on it which, he thinks, is unfair to all his employees who have been holding down the fort for months while he's been fucking off, playing video games for pennies on the minute. He is grateful for it, though, when he pulls into a full parking lot late Thursday afternoon two weeks after he gets back from Bali.

Lovett pulls in, idling as he ducks his neck to peer through his windshield, up up up at the long glass window stories above him. The office space seemed symbolic when they’d moved in, their third office in three years, the long elevator ride up a sign of their exponential and unchecked upward trajectory. Their floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city a metaphor for the heights they’d already climbed. Lovett used to watch the sunset every night from those windows in the founders' office, itself a nod to their humble beginnings in Jon’s living room.

Lovett had been standing there, his shoulder pressed against the glass and his eyes on the sunset, when Jon had bailed on them. When Jon had said, _I can’t do this anymore_, and had walked out, leaving Lovett holding four dreams and the livelihoods of twenty-five people in his shaking hands.

Pundit’s collar jingles as she stands, recognizing the building with a yip and pulling Lovett out of his memories. Her tail wags fast, faster than Lovett’s heartbeat, against his arm.

“Yeah, okay,” Lovett sighs. “Here goes nothing.”

Pundit pulls at her leash, her tail whipping around his legs as she pulls him through the lobby and into the elevator. He’s halfway through a sigh of relief when he hears a call - “please hold that open” - and sticks his toe in the bottom of the door.

“Thanks.” She’s young, her strawberry blond hair swept over her shoulder in a messy ponytail. Lovett can just see the new Pod Save America logo on the back of her neck. “What an afternoon, you know how those are.”

Lovett laughs, darkly, and leans down to pull Pundit into his arms. “Better than most.”

“Wait.” She turns her head, her eyes widening as she looks at him. “Are you Jon Lovett?”

Lovett considers, for an impossible moment, pulling his hat lower over his forehead and lying. But she’s still staring at him and Pundit’s straining towards her and Lovett might not spend much time here anymore, but he still owns a thirty-three percent stake in it and everyone who works here.

Besides, he thinks as he nods and introduces her, “yeah, and this is Pundit,” Pundit has a brand to maintain.

She squeals and slides her three bags onto her elbow so she can scratch Pundit under her chin. Her nails are painted with pumpkins and spider webs. “I’m Angela. I only started a few weeks ago, but you're infamous.”

“Better than famous,” Lovett tries to joke, but it comes out strained. There was a time when he wanted to be famous. There was a time when he would have even taken infamous. Sometimes, now, he thinks he’d be happy if only three people knew his name. Except those three people made it pretty clear in Bali that they could care less about his name or anything else he has to offer. So, he guesses, infamy it is.

Angela eyes him carefully. “I listened to a few of your episodes, before my job interview.” She shrugs. “A little out of date, but you were funny.”

Past tense heats Lovett’s cheeks and burns down his chest. “Some things get better with age.”

“Sure,” she agrees. “Cheese, a good wine, leather. Not the news.”

She surprises a choked laugh from him as the elevator doors bing open. “Well,” he says, as he steps off and holds the door for her. “It was nice to meet you, Angela. I can see why Tanya hired you.”

She steps off, balancing her bags on her arm. “I hope that’s a compliment.”

Lovett nods, “me too,” and let’s her walk in in front of him.

It’s as if he stepped through the front door and into the Twilight Zone. It’s Crooked HQ, but eight months and a host of new advertisers older. The Burrow couch he’d picked out in a shade of burnt orange he’d thought Tommy would enjoy is angled against the opposite wall. The desks are in four-person pods, all with one of those large ball chairs that are supposed to be good for posture and, according to their quarterly statements, are definitely good for Crooked's bottom line. In the giant fridge facing him, he can see rows of green juice and White Claw where there used to be LaCroix and Diet Coke.

Lovett reaches in, weighing the benefits of the alcohol, before snagging a green juice. He’s just standing up again when he hears a squeal behind him, followed by a whispered, “Angela said he was here but I didn’t believe her. Put it in the Slack.”

Lovett closes his eyes against the inevitable rush of sound and bodies. The rapid typing of keys, a row of hands and introductions and “Lovett, long time no see”s, a few fingers he knows squeezing his elbow and a few he doesn’t and one young man he doesn’t recognize who greets him with “I watched you play Bloodlines 2 last night, that vampire was dope but you should try a reverse attack” as if he’s a walking, talking, smiling Twitch troll. 

He’s never been more grateful to see Tanya when she pushes through the crowd, “I don’t pay you all to hang out in the kitchen, go, get, finish some actual work.” She grabs Lovett’s elbow, twisting her fingers around it. “And you. You’re late.”

Lovett almost sinks into her in relief at the sheer normality of it. “Pundit’s a celebrity, I can’t help that we were stopped a hundred times between the parking lot and here.”

Tanya rolls her eyes. “Leave the celebrity, bring your exaggerating ass.”

Tanya’s office is as refreshing as her wry smile. Lovett folds himself into her guest chair, the one closest to the fake news Rubik’s cube she keeps on her desk. He grabs it, solving it three times as Tanya roots around for a manila folder.

“Here it is.” Tanya hands it over. “The lawyer’s marked all the places where you need to sign. All routine though.”

Lovett nods, dropping it into his lap and turning back to the puzzle. “I’ll sign it.”

“As the only of you who’s still taking my calls,” Tanya’s voice twists, “I’d appreciate that.”

Her eyes are dark and accusatory and Lovett’s thrown back into that pool in Bali. Tommy, naked for none of the reasons Lovett’s every dreamed of seeing him like that, his pale skin blinding against the stars and the crystal clear water. So that Lovett couldn’t possibly miss how much he meant it when he squared his perfect jaw, plucked the stars from the sky and threw them at Lovett like daggers forged from Lovett’s darkest anxieties.

_So that you can bitch and moan and blame every other person in your life for your unhappiness rather than the one person you should_.

Lovett drops the Rubik’s cube back to Tanya’s desk. He doesn’t know if he can be happy, not when the three ghosts of what might have been but never would be are cold against his back. But he can try. “About that-”

Tanya’s face softens. “I didn’t mean to imply that it’s your fault.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Lovett shakes his head. “I want to talk about Lovett or Leave It.”

***

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me to come in?” Spencer asks for the fifth - no, Lovett keeps forgetting the time he asked _before _the show even started- sixth time as he pulls into Lovett’s driveway and throws the car into park.

Lovett shakes his head. “You came to your first Lovett or Leave It after five years on the air-”

“Minus a few months.”

“- and that’s more than enough,” Lovett finishes, leveling him with a glare and adding, “asshole. You call yourself my best friend.”

Spencer shrugs. “I played the role you put me in.”

Lovett sighs, flashes of ad reads - Jon’s fond exasperation and his anxious ticks, scrolling endlessly through his tablet while Tommy lent so far back in his chair that Lovett was convinced he’d fall and deserve the consequences - forcing their way out of his subconscious. Lovett taps them down and pastes on a smile. “And you played it flawlessly.”

Spencer snorts, reaching out to touch Lovett’s wrist. “I’ll play whatever role you need me to.”

“Don’t go sappy on me now,” Lovett swallows past the lump in his throat, “I get enough of that already. _Got_. Past tense. We’re living in a post-sap world.”

Spencer snorts and pulls his hand back, dropping it into his lap. “If you’re sure-”

He’s been doing an admirable job of filling in the giant holes in Lovett’s calendar if not in his heart. But, Lovett’s already asking more of Spencer than he had before, and he’s as wary of forcing Spencer to overstay his welcome as he is of overstaying his own. Besides, “nah, I’ve already kept you out on a Friday night, your wife wants to see your shining face, too.”

Spencer snorts. “She’s out.”

“Well,” Lovett slides out of the passenger seat, already turning to where he can see Pundit’s face peeking through the curtains behind the couch. “Then use the time to, I don’t know, do whatever you do. Pluck your eyebrows. Lounge on the couch in your underwear. Watch a war movie.”

Spencer raises an eyebrow, “when was I replaced with an alien double who likes any one of those things?”

Lovett shrugs, “I don’t know what new hobbies you’ve picked up while I’ve been developing my brand as a Twitch phenom.”

Spencer shakes his head and rolls down the window as Lovett shuts the door. “Same time, same place next Friday?”

Lovett feels a pinch as his heart gets stuck between two ribs. “You don’t have to, I know the political beat has never been your thing.”

“Lovett.”

Lovett nods, “same time, same place” and knocks his fist against his chest as he walks up the drive. Pundit disappears from the window and he can hear her tail thumb against the door and her soft whines.

He smiles as he slides to a knee and greets her on the threshold. She curls between his ankles, her eyes dark and accusing that he left her for the first time in months. “I know, I know,” he ruffles her ears, “I’m the worst. How about we make up for it now, huh?”

Pundit barks and follows him through the house as he strips, leaving a trail of fitted pants and striped shirts like breadcrumbs, where the prize is sweats and a liter of Diet Coke and the comfort of fitting himself back into his well worn rut. He lets out a sigh of relief as he leans back against the couch, camera focused and controller warm and comfortable against the calluses of his hands, Pundit's head resting on his thigh.

Even the comments, as they start streaming in, are welcome for their familiarity. Fellatio666’s jabs at his lack of a defensive fighting style are a familiar blanket settling over his shoulders on the long winter’s day that hasn’t ended since that awful November night. H0tB1scu1t’s homophobic slurs burn through his bloodstream, spur him past the witching hour and into dawn. N1N3Inch3s’ insults about his game choice float in with the dawn, grounding and normal, and TrustTheProcess44-

Lovett blinks, pausing the game.

_Hey, man, I was watching this_

_Fuck this, I’m out_

_I wasn’t enjoying this stream anyway, as good an excuse an any to bail. Good luck making your pennies, asshole_

Lovett ignores them all and scrolls back up. 

_TrustTheProcess44: Congratulations_.

Lovett reaches for his phone, dislodging Pundit in the process. She woofs, getting up and stretching her back as Lovett slides his phone out from under her back paws. He has 54 missed notifications. The Pod went out 22 minutes ago. Fuck, Elijah made quick work.

Twitch bings an alert in his ear.

_TrustTheProcess44: You sound good. You should make this a regular thing._

Lovett’s phone buzzes in his hand.

Twitch bings another alert.

_H0tB1scu1t: This isn’t a fucking gay love fest. Beat the gorilla or get off the pot_

_TrustTheProcess44: Are you embarrassed at the use of that metaphor? You should be._

Lovett’s phone buzzes three times in succession. He looks down, turning the power off, then shuts down his Xbox and ends his stream.

Pundit yawns and starts to curl up again, stopping midway when he slides to his feet. His knees are numb, his feet feel like pincushions, and he has to use the wall for support as he makes his way back to the bedroom.

His thumbs are sore as he pushes his sweatpants to the floor and crawls into his unmade bed, pulling his laptop into the crook of his hips and pulling up CNN’s YouTube channel. They have an entire playlist dedicated to Jon’s performances and Lovett clicks on the newest one. Pundit curls against his side, her nose resting over his shoulder as if she’s as desperate to see him as Lovett is.

While Lovett had been on stage, trying to nurture and cultivate the small sprig of good will he still has left, Jon had been ranting about tariff policy. Ever since Bali, Jon’s notched it up an impossible notch. His hair is a little wilder and his eyes are a little deeper set, like hair and make-up has given up on taming his wild look and let him embrace it. His voice is a little deeper, cracks a little more often, like it’s not quite lubricated enough or, perhaps, too much. He looks swollen, puffy, like-

Lovett remembers what he looked like, lying face up in that pool under the Indonesian stars. He remembers pretending to read his phone while he was counting the new wrinkles in Jon's chest. He remembers feeling Dan’s body heat next to him, disapproval flowing off him in waves, the only thing keeping Lovett from lingering over the patch of curls and the softness of Jon’s dick in the crook of his thighs. He remembers Jon’s voice not cracking over _you were my reason for living_, as if Lovett needed the reminder that he wasn’t enough for Jon. He wasn’t enough for any of them.

Lovett wraps an arm around Pundit, letting his laptop slide harmlessly to the mattress next to them. He drifts off to Jon’s voice.

***

Pundit lies down halfway through their walk.

Lovett sighs, pocketing his phone and squatting down to pet her head. “I know it’s hot, I’m sorry.”

She looks up at him, her tongue out and her eyes dark and accusing. Lovett doesn’t like to walk her mid-afternoon any more than she likes to be walked with the sun beating down on her, but producing Lovett It or Leave It has proven harder when he’s not in the office all day, every day. Over the past six shows, he’s figured out that the best way to recreate just a little of the workshopping he used to have is to meet Travis and Elijah at the Improv as early as they’ll allow. 

It’s a particularly warm day for mid-December, though, and Pundit rolls belligerently onto her side. Lovett sighs, picking her up and groaning as he straightens, his knees creaking and pulling as he stands. She’s heavier than she should be. Lovett has to stop letting her beg treats off of him.

She yips, licking his neck and resting her head on his shoulder.

He’s raised the most devious fucking dog.

The walk back is slower than the walk there, and Lovett uses the time to run through his jokes for the show as they walk past cacti covered in Christmas lights and blow-up Santas in succulent gardens. He’s halfway through a rant wheel monologue about Jewish cacti when he turns the last corner home and frowns.

There’s a car in his driveway, a practical sedan with a sunroof and, as Lovett gets closer he can see, rental plates.

Lovett squints through his sunglasses.

There’s a rental car in his driveway and Dan on his front stoop. He’s wearing work khakis and a t-shirt and the black hoodie he always wears on long flights. He’s sweating even in the shade, the collar of his shirt dark with it and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looks better than he did in Bali.

“Is trespassing a habit you picked up in New Zealand?” Lovett asks, stopping halfway up his front walk. He adjusts Pundit in his arms, suddenly glad for the weight of her.

Dan shrugs and lifts the edge of Lovett’s welcome mat. “I didn’t use the key to let myself in. This seemed like an acceptable compromise.”

Lovett sighs. He’s been meaning to buy one of those hide-a-key things for years. “Thank you for that. I guess.”

Dan nods, “no problem,” and stands up. His thighs pull under his khakis and it’s definitely not Lovett’s bias, Dan’s been taking care of himself over the past few weeks. “I won’t keep you. I know you have a show tonight-”

“It’s sold out,” Lovett says, quickly, half because he’s still amazed by the reception he’s been getting and half because he can’t have Dan there. His heart is already beating wildly against his chest, sweat pooling at his neck and back, at just the _thought_ of Dan in the audience. 

Dan smiles, the small, close-mouthed smile that Dan can’t fake and has put Lovett at ease on stages from the HBO greenroom to The Greek to Radio fucking City. “I have to go to this client dinner or I’d be there with bells on.”

Lovett shrugs, shifting Pundit so that Dan can get the full effect around her. “Next time.”

“Next time,” Dan promises. “Axe has me here for a couple days. We’re thinking of starting a second branch-”

“In LA?” Lovett interrupts, too quickly, too fast, his words beating in time with his heart.

Dan shrugs. “Maybe, yeah.”

“That would be-” Lovett lets it hang, unfinished, not wanting to lie and not knowing enough of the truth not to.

“Yeah,” Dan fills in, anyway. “I’ve got a pretty packed schedule, but I’m free tomorrow morning. For brunch.”

Lovett swallows. “I-” His chest aches with want, imagining them sitting across from each other on a sun-dappled patio, farm fresh honey on their table and Pundit at their feet, talking as if the past thirteen months are water under their very fragile bridge. His mind, though, is stuck in a quagmire of Bali memories, of Dan standing back as Jon and Tommy broke through the last of Lovett’s barriers, watching and waiting for his opportunity to run, just like he did the first time around.

Lovett’s caught, teetering on the precipice, when his phone buzzes in his pocket. Probably a reminder from Elijah or Travis or both that he’s running even later than usual.

Lovett sighs and leaps, with only half the intention of reaching the ground. “Yeah, fine, okay.”

“11:30?” Dan nods, his lips twisting with the effort not to smile. “I’ll pick you up. Might as well take advantage of the sunroof.”

Lovett nods, his throat dry. “Sunroof, right.”

He takes an aborted step forward and, reading his cues, Dan pulls his keys out of his pocket and steps around him. “Break a leg.”

“Yeah,” Lovett tells his back, “you too.”

***

Lovett sets his alarm for 10 am but doesn’t fall asleep until long after dawn, when Elijah finally calls it a night on Lovett or Leave It edits and Lovett signs off of Slack and into a brutal Twitch beating. His alarm goes off only a couple hours after he dragged himself into bed and he snoozes it until the absolute last moment.

He brushes his teeth with his eyes closed, Pundit sniffing around his feet and tripping him up three times before he stumbles into the shower. He’s pretty sure he’s on his third round of shampoo but he can’t be absolutely sure when he hears his doorbell ring.

And ring again.

“Fuck,” Lovett mutters, tipping his head back into the spray and rinsing quickly. He steps out, reaching for his phone and a towel at the same time, frowning at the clock.

“You’re early,” Lovett calls, as he hops into his sweatpants on the way to the front door. He’s still pulling his shirt over his head as he pushes Pundit back, “come on, girl, you saw him yesterday.”

“I didn’t know I had a time,” Tommy says.

Tommy.

On the other side of Lovett’s door.

Tommy, bending down to pet Pundit like he’s done this every damn day for the last thirteen fucking months.

“You didn’t,” Lovett swallows, tempted to shut the door on them both. He can get a new dog, she’s a traitor anyway. “You don’t. I don’t want you here.”

Tommy flinches, standing and adjusting his messenger bag on his shoulder. He looks unfairly comfortable with his hair gelled to the side and an expensive-looking button-down tucked into his cigarette pants, tight enough that Lovett can see his belly move with his breaths. “I deserve that.”

Lovett drags his eyes to Tommy’s. His eyes are bluer and lighter than they were that night in Bali, when he stood, naked, and accused Lovett of victimizing himself, but he’s still Tommy. “You deserve a lot more than that.”

“That’s fair.” Tommy takes a half step forward. Like he still owns a piece of this house, like he didn’t throw it away when he threw away the slice of Lovett’s heart that Lovett had leant him. “Can you tell me about it inside, though?”

“Worried the neighbors might overhear?” Lovett snaps. “Afraid word might get out that Tommy Vietor isn’t quite as perfect as he lets on?”

Tommy sighs, dropping his foot back under him. He adjusts his messenger bag, again, his fingers tapping nervously against the strap. “I just want to talk to you. Please?”

Lovett sighs. He doesn’t actually want his neighbors, especially not his neighbors who just happen to be related to Jon, to hear this anymore than Tommy does. He steps back. “Don’t touch anything, I don’t want any of your-” he motions at Tommy’s whole aura- “thing getting on anything.”

Tommy rolls his eyes as he steps around Lovett and into the house. He toes his shoes off on Lovett’s mat and drops his messenger bag on top of them. 

Lovett frowns at him as he pads over to the coffee maker and digs through his cabinets for a filter. “You’re planning on staying for awhile then?”

Tommy sighs. “I know you have no reason to give me the benefit of the doubt, but can you just- _please_, until I can explain?”

Lovett lets his cabinet slam shut and dumps what’s left of his coffee into the machine. He fills it with water and clicks it on. He doesn’t turn around as it starts percolating. “Explain, then.”

Tommy sighs again, like _he’s _the one inconvenienced by showing up on Lovett’s doorstep, unannounced, when Lovett’s on two hours of sleep and still reeling from the prospect of brunch with-

_Fuck_.

“Actually,” Lovett says, quickly, feeling his back muscles tighten and twist unpleasantly. A year playing video games on his living room floor for a living has done nothing for his back problems. Lovett presses his hand back against the sore spot as the doorbell rings. “Fuck,” he repeats, out loud this time.

The doorbell rings again, followed by three quick raps. “Lovett?”

Lovett sighs, “fuck,” a third time and leaves the relative safety of his coffee corner to open the door. In for a penny, in for a pound, if, he guesses, pennies are Tommy’s smile and a pound is a quorum of the last time they were all here, thirteen months ago now, in this same kitchen.

Dan smiles, soft and shy, and takes a step over the threshold before freezing. “Ahh, Tommy.”

“Hi.” Tommy smiles, a real, wide smile from where he’s gotten up to help himself to a mug of Lovett’s coffee.

“Fancy, ahh,” Dan swallows. Lovett can see Dan’s throat work over it as he detours, “what a coincidence.”

“Not really.” Tommy shrugs, stepping up to hand them both mugs to match his own. “I got on a plane the moment I heard you were gonna be in town.”

Dan’s brow furrows. Lovett doesn’t feel any better than Dan looks.

Tommy takes a step back. “Maybe we should call Jon, hmm?”

***

“Mandy and I are through,” Tommy says, the moment they’re all seated in the living room Lovett had frantically tidied in the fifteen minutes between his incredibly awkward phone call to Jon and the moment he arrived on Lovett’s doorstep, looking unshaved and smelling unwashed.

Jon tightens his fingers around his black coffee, blowing ripples over the surface as he shrugs. Dan leans back against the couch arm, crossing his ankles in front of him and eyeing Tommy with one of the impatient, speculative looks that used to leave young communications staffers shaking in their oxfords.

Lovett looks down at his bare feet. He wishes he’d been able to finish his shower. He wishes his heart didn’t flip, traitorously, at Tommy's words. As if the destruction of the good things in Tommy’s life would somehow lead to good things for _him_. Lovett gave up on assuming an equal and fair tit-for-tat from the universe when he was in sixth grade.

Tommy sighs, his shoulders slumping, exasperated. “I broke up with her.”

Jon shrugs. “Okay.”

“I moved out. Lucca and I are living in the Four Seasons on 57th.”

Lovett looks up, his frown deepening. “Are we supposed to be sorry that you’re living in a five-star penthouse?”

Tommy sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t know what the fuck you want from me.”

Lovett can think of a number of things, but Tommy's already given his answer. _No thank you_. 

It's Jon, though, who snaps, "nothing you’re prepared to give,” his voice thin and brittle and so edged that it cuts Lovett’s ears before he can even process the words.

Tomm doesn’t flinch. He spreads his arms, thrusting his chest outwards. “Nothing you’re ready to accept.”

Lovett looks between them. He frowns even deeper. He was there. He knows what Tommy thinks about him, about Jon. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Tommy throws his palms upwards in disgust, “that I was here last year. I wanted to make this- us- work, and you all gave up.”

Lovett flinches back, his shoulder blades hitting the back of the couch with so much force that he’s winded. He can’t breathe. His vision is going spotty. He’s struggling to keep his eyes here, on this Tommy and his fucking righteous anger, and not thirteen months ago when Tommy looked at him with the same fucking expression but much different words.

Jon crosses his arms tightly over his chest and glares at Tommy. “We gave up?”

“Yes.” Tommy nods. “You made it very clear that Crooked wasn’t on the agenda anymore.”

Lovett’s vision blurs. “Some of us did,” he murmurs, not expecting much, not expecting anything-

Tommy brings his arms inwards, crossing them tightly and looking away, towards the taco juice stain he left years ago on the edge of Lovett’s carpet. “It wasn’t enough.”

\- but somehow, Tommy manages to beat even Lovett’s worst nightmares in a race to the bottom. Lovett huddles in on himself, his shoulders curling inwards and his knees drawing into his chest. “Right, of course it wasn’t.”

Tommy sighs, looking up and over Lovett’s head. “Come on, don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.”

“Right.” Lovett turns his chin so he doesn’t have to look at anything but the thread count of his sweatpants and the memories of the last time they had this conversation, playing out in technicolor behind his eyelids. “I always play the victim, I forgot. My apologies.”

Dan reaches out to touch him but, as Lovett flinches, he detours to squeeze the couch cushion between them. “What did you mean, then?”

“I meant that Crooked wasn’t enough,” Tommy shrugs. “I meant that I’ve given my life over to public service and I need something more than that. I meant that it wasn’t worth it anymore, without you. It wasn’t last year and it still isn’t.”

Lovett lifts his chin to rest on his knees. “Crooked wasn’t enough once it wasn’t all of us,” he clarifies, not sure if that’s a better or worse explanation than he’s been writing for himself these last few months.

“No,” Tommy says, easily. As if leaving their baby, the company they built from the ground up, the company they built _together_, was so easy to throw out with the bathwater. “It wasn’t. Not after- We lost, Lovett. We failed. It wasn’t worth it to try again without you.”

“_We _were there,” Lovett frowns, then turns his head to look at Dan, his cheek resting on his knees. “Some of us were.”

Dan flinches back, pulling his ankles off the table and leaning towards Lovett. He says, softly, “my doctors told me to go.”

Lovett shivers at the memory of Dan, so pale and lifeless, in that hospital bed. He wouldn't have wanted Dan to stay, not if it meant another moment in that bed, but-

Jon swallows. “But you didn’t come back.”

Lovett dares a look up at him, as he adds, “and you didn’t have to go so far.”

“I’m sorry.” Dan reaches out again and Lovett doesn’t have it in him to push Dan away again. “My heart needed a break and my mind needed a reminder. But, I shouldn’t have cut you all out like I did.”

“Woulda been nice if you’d at least answered a text,” Jon sighs, and Lovett knows he’s remembering the same thing Lovett is. Tracking Dan’s flight from their desks at Crooked, waiting and waiting and waiting for so much as an _I arrived!_

“I should have,” Dan nods, seriously, “but were _you_ texting?”

“I was,” Lovett sighs, looking at the hand Dan still has on his arm. “For awhile. While I was still running our fucking company.”

Dan shakes his head. “I was so useless by the end, I really didn’t think you needed me for that.”

“I always need you,” Lovett says, before he can swallow his words. He adds, quickly, “to bounce ideas off of, you know? You didn’t have to, like, come in every day.”

Dan’s fingers squeeze around his wrist. “I didn’t think I was leaving you alone. I really am sorry.”

Dan’s sincerity digs under Lovett’s skin and buries itself there, in a way that Tommy’s blustering can’t, and it’s too much and it’s not enough and Lovett shakes his head. “It’s okay, I get it. I wasn’t enough to make you stay,” he risks a glance up at Jon and Tommy, “and I’ve made my peace with that.”

“That’s not it.” Dan frowns at him.

“What was it then?”

“It wasn’t that you weren’t enough.” Dan shifts closer, moving his hand from Lovett’s wrist to his knee and squeezing. “The opposite. You’ve always been enough, Lovett. I left because I wanted too-”

He cuts himself off, his words hanging in the air, so thick with tension that they twist there, unable to fall.

“What?” Jon leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “What did you want from Lovett?”

Dan shakes his head as he corrects, “from all of you.”

Tommy bites his lip, taking a step forward. “Everything?” He whispers.

Dan nods, turning towards Tommy. His voice catches as he answers. “It was impossible. None of you wanted- But if I didn’t leave, I was going to ask for it, anyway.”

All the bluster leaks out of Tommy and he deflates, sinking to the coffee table next to them like he’s been living on adrenaline and a dangerous cocktail of drugs and alcohol and self-righteousness, and Dan’s words cut his strings with one clip.

Tommy reaches for Dan’s free hand. “Maybe not so impossible.”

“Tommy,” Dan breathes, shaking his head. “Don’t promise things you don’t mean.”

“That night in Chicago,” Tommy says, unsteadily. “If I hadn’t left your apartment-”

“You were engaged.”

“I was.” Tommy nods, his voice low and insistent. “It would have been wrong then, but I'm not engaged anymore. I wasn’t lying, I really did break up with her. Mostly because-” He pulls his eyes from Dan to rest over Lovett, then Jon- “I couldn’t hold this in anymore.”

Dan shakes his head, his words barely above a whisper. “I never would have, that night in Chicago, but I wanted to. I wanted- I wanted you back, _Tommy_, not the Tommy I- Not that Tommy.”

Tommy nods a little, desperately. His eyes are oceans away when he catches Lovett’s, roiling like waves crashing against the shore, over and over again. “I needed you - all of you - to help me find that Tommy. I still do.”

Dan nods, leaning forward. “Whatever you need. I want to see him again.”

“Me too,” Tommy says, wetly. “Can we find him, together?”

Dan squeezes Tommy’s hand as he nods. “Nothing more in the world that I want.”

Lovett’s curled tighter in on himself, watching them, and he doesn’t look up until Jon makes the same, hurt noise that Lovett's just barely managing to choke back.

Tommy turns, his thighs bunching as he reaches for Jon with his free hand. “You too, Jon. I’ve thought about that night every damn day since I left for Boston.”

Lovett flinches. He didn’t- He knew. Of course he knew, he knows Jon and Tommy both way too well not to see all the signs of the inevitable consummation of fifteen years of yearning. Lovett had been naive enough, then, to think that that night was going to be the end of everything the four of them had going.

The confirmation still hurts though, like fingernails scratching at a year-old scar.

Jon shivers, his fingers tightening around Tommy’s. “Tommy.”

“Mandy wasn’t just a rebound from the election,” Tommy pushes. “It never worked between us, because I could never stop thinking about _you_.”

“If you had- _fuck_, Tommy, that’s all I ever wanted to hear. A fucking year ago.” Jon’s body is shaking as he looks down, his free hand running through his oily, unkempt hair. “But now- I don’t know if I have anything left to give you.”

Dan shakes his head, quickly. “You’re in there, Jon. And even if you’re not, we- I- love every version of you.”

“We,” Tommy promises, quickly.

Jon’s voice breaks over “love?”

Tommy swallows, hard enough that Lovett can feel it, all the way to his toes. “For over a fucking decade.”

Jon nods, "me too," tugging on Tommy’s hand until he tips, wobbly, into Jon’s space. 

Tommy lifts his head, his mouth slotting with Jon’s for a kiss, salty and slow and uncoordinated. It aches through Lovett’s entire body, pulling and twisting and leaving shreds of pain and an impossible, beating, sprig of hope that won’t wither no matter how hard Lovett tries to close the doors on it.

The world stops and Lovett doesn’t know anything but the sight before him and the rush of paralyzing inevitability in him, until he finally hears Dan murmur his name.

“Lovett, please, say something.”

Lovett shakes his head, turning to look at Dan. Dan tilts in his vision, his ears a little blurry at the edges. His voice sounds low and far away to his own ears as he says, “I’m very happy for you. Let me know if you figure out how to save America in-between all the-” he waves his hand at them and almost falls off the couch- “and need my help with anything.”

Dan frowns, letting go of Tommy’s hand so that he can turn his entire body towards Lovett. His voice is choked. “Lovett. When I said everyone, I meant _everyone_.”

Tommy breaks the kiss to turn to Lovett, his fingers still squeezed tightly around Jon’s knee. “Me too, Lovett. We need you, I need you.”

Lovett shakes his head, his eyes flicking from Dan’s earnest face to Tommy’s flushed cheeks. “What happened to ‘you weren’t enough’?”

Tommy makes an aborted motion forward. “Lovett, no, I- I meant that what I had wasn’t enough. You were pulling away, Crooked was crumbling, Dan was gone, I’d just fucked everything with Jon. I- you’re- you’re so much more than enough, Lovett. I've loved you for so long I don't remember how to be enough without you."

Lovett swallows, pulling his arms across his chest, trying to hold it all in. “You don’t need to say that. I don’t need you to let me down easily.”

Tommy frowns, sliding along the coffee table so that their knees are pressed together. “I’m not letting you down easily. I’m being honest, for the first time in a really long time.”

Lovett wants to believe him almost as much as he wants to protect himself. He teeters on the edge, staring down, down, down, towards everything he's ever wanted, wanting nothing more than to let himself fall.

“I can’t,” he whispers. “I can’t let myself believe in this again.”

Jon gets up on shaky legs and crosses to sit on the couch arm, his ankle pressed to Lovett’s on the couch and his arm around Lovett’s shoulders. “Try.”

“How?” Lovett can feel them all, so close, their heat sweating through him. “You left me. _All of you_. With the company, with the country, with all the crumbling parts of me. I loved you _so much_ and you left me.”

Tommy swallows, his voice tight. “I’m sorry. I fucked everything up, so badly.”

“We all did,” Jon murmurs. “I love you so much. I don’t know how to-”

“I’m so mad at you,” Lovett whispers.

“I know,” Tommy nods. “You should be. I’ll spend the rest of our lives making it up to you if you let me.”

Lovett tips towards Dan, feeling the ground crumble under him even as he scrambles to keep his perch. “I want to," he whispers, desperate and wanting.

Dan reaches for him, “please, Lovett. We’re disasters without you.”

The last of the cliff edge crumbles and tumbles down. 

Lovett falls.

“I love you,” he whispers, feeling Jon’s hand slide into his hair and Tommy’s hand squeeze his knee.

Dan presses his lips into Lovett’s curls. “Can we try again?”

Tommy squeezes tightly. “I’m in. All in.”

“None of you can fucking leave,” Lovett whispers, tipping his head back to look up at Jon.

Jon shakes his head. “I’ll give you everything I have left to give.”

Dan nods, “me too. I’ll be at your side, for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Okay.” Lovett nods wetly and leans into him. “Okay, yeah. Let’s start again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always appreciated and/or come find me on [Tumblr](https://stainyourhands.tumblr.com).


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